
Class 
Book. 



ir- 



Copyright N^'. 



CDEfRIGHT DEPOSm 



AN ENGLISHWOMAN'S HOME 

MRS. A. BURNETT SMITH 

[Annie S. Swan] 






The removing of those things thai are shaken, . . . that 
those things which cannot he shaken may remain. 

Hebbews XII. 27 



'AN 

ENGLISHWOMAN'S 
HOME 

BY 

MRS. A. BURNETT SMITH 

[Annie S. Swan] • 




NEW X2^ YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



^^t^ 



^<^ 



Copyright, 1918, / 

By George H. Doran Company 



JUL 22 1918 



Printed in the United States of America 



-" / 






TO 

THEODATE POPE RIDDLE 

AND THE DEAR AMERICAN WAR WOMEN WHO OPENED TO ME 
THEIR HEARTS AND HOMES, THIS RECORD OF TRUE 
HAPPENINGS IN THE ENGLISH WAR ZONE 
IS AFFECTIONATELY AND GRATE- 
FULLY INSCRIBED 



A PUBLISHER'S PREFACE 

It was in " Alder syde" many years ago that 
I first met Mrs. Burnett Smith, writing then 
as during the intervening years under the pen 
name of Annie S. Swan, beloved of all readers 
of wholesome books. 

Many times since I have met her — acquaint- 
ance ripened into friendship — ^visit succeeded 
visit, until now upon the occasion of her official 
visit to the United States it has been the good 
fortune of myself and my family to entertain 
her as an honoured guest. 

In the course of our quiet talks Mrs. Bur- 
nett Smith has told me the story of her life in 
England, just outside of London, since war 
began. Her experiences were so varied, yet so 
typical of what the Englishwoman has been 
called upon to endure, that I begged of her to 
make record of them for her friends in Amer- 
ica. She demurred until I reminded her that 
she was in our debt many letters — ^hence the 
[vii] 



A PUBLISHER'S PREFACE 



intimate form of this narrative. Indeed it was 
only by urging the personal obligation that she 
has been persuaded to tell her story, which it is 
my proud privilege to publish in this form. 



^^ji-^^'i-^^ 



New Yoek, May 10, 1918. 



[viii] 



AN ENGLISHWOMAN'S HOME 



AN ENGLISHWOMAN'S HOME 



My Dear: To-day I opened the cedar 
wood box — I can see the little wrinkle of your 
level brows over these cryptic words, can 
almost hear you ask why something so simple 
should be chronicled as a war time event. 

I expect you remember just where the box 
stood on the little very old table at the left side 
of my study window. It was often between us, 
when we had those wonderful talks in the 
summer of 1913, Once I remember I removed 
it gently out of your reach, as you thumped its 
precious lid rather hard to emphasise your in- 
dignation over the accumulated injustices of 
life. 

It is far removed now from the delicate set- 
ting you so much approved, the red rose of the 
window hangings no longer accentuates its 
quaint outline. 

It now stands bald and bare on the work- 
[13] 



AN ENGLISH WOMAN'S HOME 

f ; 

man-like writing table in the smoking room of 
our Kingdom by the Sea. You never achieved 
acquaintance with this dear place in your ex- 
tensive yet inadequate travel year, owing to 
George's feverish desire to transport you to 
the particular bit of Germany he had so long 
idealised. I am thinking now of his chastened 
demeanour when he brought you back. Some- 
thing had gone out of his early dream; that 
elusive essence which once gone can never be 
recaptured. Youth is ours only once — we 
may go on pretending; but there comes no 
second spring. 

Your letters — and certain of George's — 
considered by his critic worthy of the privilege, 
have always been "taken care of" (I love that 
comforting American phrase) in the cedar 
wood box. It so happens that it is the one in- 
timate thing I have brought here with me. It 
was picked up in the garden with part of its 
contents scattered, after making a hasty exit 
through the window — Heavens! I hear you 
say — ^what can she be talking about — and why 
is she so far from her base in war time? Here 
is the bald and awful fact — 

There is no more North House. Have 
[14] 



AN ENGLISH WOMAN'S HOME 

f '^^ 

you taken it in, Cornelia? You loved its 
simple dignity, its old-world repose. You 
had no fault to find because it did not 
spread itself to any great extent, and lacked all 
the wonderful conveniences to which you are 
accustomed in your own home. You allowed 
it the defects of its quality, nay, I even believe 
that you loved them. Did you not put your 
hand over my mouth when I audibly wished 
that my mauve thistle spare bedroom had been 
a more spacious chamber, where you could sit 
or stand at an angle immune from draughts, or 
from bumping against some aggressive article 
of furniture. 

I often apologised for the one bathroom, 
small at that, and for the inadequate supply of 
hot water. Then you would point to the moss- 
grown terrace at the back, the cedar tree on the 
lawn, sloping to the winding river, and the del- 
icate vistas beyond. "Oh yes," I said, "it is 
the only garden in the world, but the house 
could be improved on." Did I really say that? 
I know I did, not once, but a thousand times, 
and now I am the prey of a most unendurable 
kind of remorse, that which we feel when 
something we loved is removed permanently 

[15] 



AN ENGLISH WOMAN'S HOME 

from our sight and we know we belittled it. 

Now perhaps you will understand, Cornelia, 
— the home we all loved together — though 
often belittling it in the grumpy Scotch way 
— is dead. It will never be ours any more. 
Its roof can never shelter those we love, nor 
its walls echo the happy laughter which doeth 
good like a medicine. I see the bewilderment 
gathering in your quizzical eyes, and you won- 
der what it is all about, and whether I have 
taken leave of the small modicum of sense 
Himself and you allotted to me the last time 
we discussed the question together. 

The truth is, I am afraid to begin. I do not 
know how to tell it. The world is full of 
words — but there do not seem to be any to fit 
this case. But I must try. I have been sit- 
ting ever so long, looking out to the sea, which 
is no longer a pathway to the sun, but a men- 
acing grey highway across which awful shapes 
may at any moment race to destroy our peace, 
and fill us with terror and dismay. To the 
left, as I turn my eyes, through the window 
I see the gleaming nozzle of one of the big 
guns, with the gunners ready beside it. They 
are there night and day. So even our sum- 

[16] 



AN ENGLISH WOMAN'S HOME 

mer home is in the grip of the war monster 
from which there is no escape. It is the 16th 
of October and the skies are very grey, the air 
heavy with a strange chill, the sea mists are 
creeping up — and the moan of the breakers 
against the rocks seems to presage some com- 
ing doom. 

It was very lovely in Hertfordshire in Oc- 
tober — its early weeks gave us a taste of the 
most beautiful Indian summer I have ever 
seen. Our chestnut trees were never more 
glorious, nor more vividly clad. Flame was 
the keynote of the colour scheme, and it lin- 
gered—wonderfully blent with all the under- 
tones of departing summer, till the picture our 
garden presented was so entrancing, I could 
not attend to my ordinary tasks, grudging 
every moment spent away from it. We were 
clearing the herbaceous borders — and plan- 
ning a new scheme for enhancing the beauty of 
the lily pond. I had long serious discussions 
with the gardener, an understanding creature, 
about economy in bulbs. The true garden- 
lover would do without clothes, rather than 
raiment for her garden; but we had to patri- 
otically compromise, and, with a little ingenu- 

[IT] 



AN ENGLISH WOMAN'S HOME 

! 

ity and extra planning, saw a very promising 
vista for the spring. You have noticed, in- 
deed, it was, I think, more than once the sub- 
ject of our talk, that the last summer of a 
person's life is often the most beautiful. It 
was so with our boy. 

Do you remember how I told you that when 
our little fishing expedition at Amulree came 
to an end in 1910, and the children were so loth 
to leave the old inn and the everlasting hills, 
I said to him, "Never mind, son, next summer 
when Dad and I go to America to visit Uncle 
George and Aunt Cornelia, you and Effie will 
come here all by yourselves, or with Aunt Jack, 
and have it all over again." 

He turned his big quiet grey eyes on mine 
and said very simply, "These things don't hap- 
pen, Mummy." He was very young when he 
learned that lesson. It all came true, not in 
my sense, but in his. 

Before the next summer came, his dear 
beautiful body was laid on the cliff side at the 
Kingdom by the Sea and his soul had stolen 
"away" to his appointed place in his Father's 
House. 

That was the most beautiful summer in our 
[18J 



AN ENGLISH WOMAN'S HOME 

lives — not in his only, but in our whole family 
life, of a richness and nearness and dearness, 
to describe which, there are no words. 

Well, and this the last summer of our gar- 
den's life, in so far as it concerned us, was the 
most beautiful we have ever known, in a cir- 
cle of many summers, all beautiful. 

Never had there been such wealth of bloom. 
The roses! They simply flung themselves in 
regal magnificence at our feet. The more you 
cut and gave away the more persistently they 
insisted upon coming on; not in single spies, 
but in battalions. 

The old walled vegetable garden which you 
so loved, being invariably found, when miss- 
ing, between its box hedges, surpassed itself. 
We could not use the stuff. Our Belgian 
household over the way, of whose doing and 
being I as chairman of the Belgian Guest com- 
mittee have written you so much, had access 
to the garden to help themselves. It is a royal 
memory we have; but only a memory. Some- 
times it seems as if soon, all life would be only 
a memory. 

Hope seems — for the moment — ^to have 
folded her tent like the Arabs, and silently 
stolen away. 

[19] 



II 



On the 12th EfRe came home from France 
in her first leave from active service. You can 
imagine the excitement in the household, the 
somewhat tremulous expectancy of Himself 
and myself. 

The one ewe lamb, as you know right well, 
is a kind of desperate possession. Once or 
twice I have recalled your warning counsel not 
to let her leave us; but, my dear, you would 
have to be here to understand the strange new 
blood that is firing the veins of both youth and 
maturity and age, the red blood of patriotism. 
She was very young to go out to that strange 
awful sublime place they call the war zone. 
But she came back to us radiant, quite un- 
changed; but yes, there is a change. She has 
the eyes of one who, born in a great time, is 
striving to live greatly. She was, before the 
war, one of the lotus flowers to whom the call 
came opportunely, and now she is blooming 
for others all unconscious of herself. You 

[20] 



AN ENGLISH WOMAN'S HOME 

who have known and shared my anxieties about 
her future, will rejoice with me, I know. She 
is not a good letter writer, she has the very 
Scotch habit of leaving out all you want to 
know. 

A dear English friend of mine, whose name 
I must not tell you, speaking of her husband, 
one day in a moment of exasperation said, 
"You have to take too much for granted with 
a Scotch husband." I smiled comprehend- 
ingly, having lived so long with Himself. 

EfRe is a little like that. You never know 
what is shut up inside of her. The Boy was 
so different, so easy to know — and so lovely 
when you did know him. Well I suppose it 
would not be good for us to be given without 
effort or seeking the key to every treasure 
house. Heavens, how I wander! T must 
come back and tell about the thing to which 
Effie came home. 

We had had a quiet lovely day together. 
I had managed to worm a little out of her about 
her beloved camp at Etaples, not half enough 
— but just enough to know what this wonder- 
ful new life of service for others is doing for the 
child. 

[21] 



AN ENGLISH WOMAN'S HOME 

! . .J 

Himself was rather busy, and had to go out 
after dinner to see some patients who required 
a late visit. The house surgeon from the hos- 
pital had just dropped in asking for him and 
we kept him, expecting that Himself would be 
back quickly. 

At half past nine, tea came up. Do you 
remember how you, and especially George, 
jeered at our evening teacups, and how grad- 
ually you were drawn into the snare until you 
acquired the passion, and used to watch the li- 
brary clock, sure the kitchen one did not cor- 
respond? 

I had a restless feeling that night. It was 
very dark, with a close sultry air, and I went 
upstairs throwing open windows that had been 
shut. I was standing at the open window of 
Himself 's dressing room when I heard the un- 
mistakable whirr of the Zeppelin engine. 

I have tried to describe it to you before. It 
is a sinister grinding noise, unlike anything on 
earth. I flew down to tell them that the Zep- 
pelins were out. Effie, eager with the quick 
longing of youth for every adventure, said, 
"No such luck," and we immediately went out 
on the terrace to crane our necks in an en- 

[22] 



AN ENGLISH WOMAN'S HOME 

deavour to discover the marauder's silver sil- 
houette against the clear dark sky. Then 
quite suddenly there was the most terrific bang, 
and somewhere in the near distance strange 
lights like shooting stars seemed to descend 
upon our little inoffensive town — ^we stood 
dumb, holding our breath, while the bangs con- 
tinued getting louder and louder. Presently, 
we were joined by the terrified servants, who, 
at their supper in the basement kitchen, un- 
aware that the Zeppelins were in the neigh- 
bourhood, came rushing out. The young ones 
were inclined to scream. I remember laying 
my hand on somebody's arm, and saying, 
"Hush, be still!" To me it was a stupendous 
moment, during which the whole fabric of ex- 
istence seemed to be tottering — and we on the 
edge of some unimaginable abyss. I remem- 
ber Effie's face lit by the weird glare from the 
incendiary bombs now falling in rapid succes- 
sion from the upper air. 

There was no fear upon it, only a kind of up- 
lifted spirituelle look. I seem to remember 
that she said, "Do you think it will be this one, 
Mummy?" but she stoutly denies having ut- 
tered any such words. Presently, however, 

[23] 



AN ENGLISH WOMAN'S HOME 

"this one" descended and found its mark. The 
din was indescribable; conceive of forty- two 
bombs dropping in a limited area in the space 
of four minutes, the glare of their bursting, 
the air full of sulphurous fumes and an awful 
indescribable sense of evil, imminent, devilish, 
against which we were absolutely helpless and 
unarmed. As we stood there in absolute si- 
lence, holding on one to another, we had no 
sort of knowledge or information that our very 
own house was being destroyed. To you this 
may seem incredible, when you reflect that the 
terrace, though wide, is joined to the house. 

It was all so quick and so terrible, that we 
felt it must be the end of the world, the total 
destruction of everything we had considered 
stable in our earthly life. Presently, the 
voice of the man beside us spoke : "I think it's 
over now, and we're safe." The air-ship, sail- 
ing low, so that we saw it distinctly between 
the cone of the cedar tree and the sky, disap- 
peared rapidly and the noise of explosions 
ceased — only to be replaced by the cries of ex- 
cited people, and the moans of the hurt and dy- 
ing in the street. The darkness was profound, 

[24] 



AN ENGLISH WOMAN'S HOME 

■~^ 

the power station having been destroyed early 
in the attack. 

We pulled ourselves together, and pro- 
ceeded towards the house with a view of en- 
tering. Part of the walls remained standing, 
but there was no house. There in the middle 
of the beautiful hall you so much admired the 
whole fabric seemed to have collapsed. Doors, 
windows, furniture, pictures, piled in an inex- 
tricable heap. We saw right out into the 
street in the further side, where already there 
were twinkling lights and moving figures as 
the work of mercy and assistance began. But 
where was Himself? 

Quickly people began to climb in upon our 
ruins, seeking presumably for us or for our re- 
mains. Presently, among them, very white in 
the face, and very glassy about the eyes, ap- 
peared Himself, wheeling his bicycle. They 
had told him down the street that his home and 
every one in it had been destroyed. He 
counted us, — we clung together for just a mo- 
ment, then he said, "I must go." ''Where?" 
I asked, still holding on. *'To my job," he an- 
swered as he unstrapped his emergency bag 

[25] 



AN ENGLISH WOMAN'S HOME 

from his machine and strode away. We did 
not see him any more till the early morning, 
he and his colleagues being busy at the hos- 
pital. Then the whole population seemed to 
be crowding us where we stood. We had no 
lights but a few stray candles. Police and 
military presently appeared to take possession, 
and the general public were excluded. The ac- 
credited powers climbed across the debris to 
reach the garden, when a strange sight pre- 
sented itself. Five incendiary bombs which 
had been dropped after the explosive ones and 
were intended to complete the work of de- 
struction, had only sunk in the soft earth, and 
were burning there like bale fires. The au- 
thorities were hunting for unexploded bombs, 
always a terrific menace until handled by ex- 
perts and shorn of their hellish power. They 
said, and say still, that one is at the bottom of 
the river where it can't do any harm. We tried 
to go up what remained of the staircase. The 
secondary staircase which connected the old 
wing with the more modern part, was blown 
into space; not a step of it remained. The 
beds, which had been in the rooms of the old 
wing, were outside somewhere, their twisted 

[26] 



AN ENGLISH WOMAN'S HOME 

f . ^^^ 

metal work and torn mattresses being after- 
wards found near the railings of the front 
garden. 

You remember the mysterious little passage 
with the double doors that led from my bed- 
room into the old wing; well, it was entirely 
gone ; cut off as clean as if a knife had done it. 
We were very adventurous, climbing about 
trying to see by candlelight the full extent of 
the damage, and with nobody to tell us that 
we took our lives in our hands every minute 
where walls were tottering, and ceilings, so 
to speak, hanging by a thread. My eight-foot 
old mahogany wardrobe which you admired 
so much had climbed upon my bed, and half 
the ceiling was on the top of that. Conceive 
what would have happened had the attack 
come without warning, when we were asleep 
in our beds! 

It has happened in other places. The pro- 
tecting mercy of God was over and round 
about us — our time had not yet come. I had 
then no feeling of anguish over my ruined 
home, none of us had. To Effie, it was a great 
adventure — the War in concrete visible tangi- 
ble form! We simply did not reahse what it 

[27] 



AN ENGLISH WOMAN'S HOME 

f . 

all meant; I suppose we shall realise it right 
enough later on. 

Midnight came — one o'clock in the morning 
— two o'clock — Himself turned up at last and 
insisted that I should find a billet somewhere 
and lie down. He and Effie determined to 
keep a vigil in the ruins. A fine rain had be- 
gun to fall, but there were dry places in the 
house, a corner of the drawing room queerly 
almost untouched. The vagaries of the con- 
cussion were beyond belief. The gable end of 
the dining room left standing was stripped 
inside of every scrap of plaster, leaving the 
lathes naked and bare. An old Chippendale 
mirror still stuck heroically to its nail, above 
the mantel, or rather the place where the man- 
tel had been, not shattered or scratched. But 
all the lovely old ladder-back chairs are gone 
and the sideboard. I shan't really know till 
I go back whether we have anything left. 

Effie took me up to my billet in a neighbour's 
house, and as we groped our way by the rail- 
ings in the inky darkness I suddenly clutched 
something soft. The flashlight revealed part 
of our dining room curtains — heavy silk dam- 

[28] 



AN ENGLISH WOMAN'S HOME 

ask ones, that had evidently been blown clean 
out up the street, and twisted round the rail- 
ings by invisible hands. 

I did not sleep any, you may be sure. I 
was the slave of physical fear after the ex- 
citement had died down. Shaking in every 
limb, even to my lips, I lay till about six 
o'clock, then got up again and dressed to go 
and seek my treasures. 

The sun was shining cheerfully as I wended 
my way through the gaping crowds which had 
come from God knows where, getting a sym- 
pathetic word and grip here and there from 
familiar friends. 

And presently I came to the North House 
gate, Oh Cornelia! 

It all looked so piteous in the clear sun- 
light, the shell of the dear home ; the inextrica- 
ble mass of plaster and bricks and broken wood 
work and all the belongings of a house. The 
crowds, there seemed to be millions of them, 
everywhere fell back to let me go in. Himself 
met me, smiling bravely, but a little grim about 
the eyes. 

*'We are going to breakfast at the OdelFs," 
[29] 



AN ENGLISH WOMAN'S HOME 

he said, "and after that you and Effie go off to 
Scotland; it is all arranged." 

It was no use protesting — ^you know how 
Himself can look, and what it means when he 
says a thing has got to be done. 

We hung about a little, and I had a sort 
of resentment because the public were all over 
the place where my house had been. They were 
not our own townsfolk, but incomers, who 
had arrived in motors, in horse traps, on bi- 
cycles from miles away. The North road was 
simply black with them. We went off pres- 
ently in a cab to our kind neighbour's house, 
where we had a good breakfast and much sym- 
pathy, which seemed to put fresh heart into 
us. When we got back, it was to get ready 
for our journey to Scotland. 

Somebody found my clothes; people I had 
never seen before seemed to be packing them 
up in trunks, not ours, which appeared mys- 
teriously from the outside. Kind hands 
brought us lunch, already prepared, and so 
we got ready to go away. But before the end 
I had a hard task. Poor Tubby, the lovely old 
mother chow, had gone mad, or at least become 
dangerous through sheer terror. You know 

[30] 



AN ENGLISH WOMAN'S HOME 

how sensitive she was. She had to be shot and 
nobody could get her out of the kennel but 
me. I went and dragged her forth and put 
the collar around her neck and took her to 
the place of execution, where the man with the 
gun was waiting. 

How did I do it? God knows, Cornelia. 
But it was absolutely necessary for the safety 
of human creatures, and I know she has for- 
given me in the happy hunting ground where 
she has gone. She knew I loved her; but when 
I heard the report of the gun the iron seemed 
to enter into my soul. Wang has gone too, 
and Satan, the impish and delicious Persian 
cat that became an inmate of this animal-lov- 
ing house after you left, was found stark by 
the edge of the immense crater made in the 
front garden by the bursting shell. It wiped 
out his favorite laurel bush, under which we 
suppose he had been sleeping when the terror 
came. 

He was not injured in any way — he died of 
the same concussion which split the old cedar 
tree and broke it right in two. Soon after 
eleven we trundled away to the station en 
route for London and Scotland, leaving Him- 

[31] 



AN ENGLISH WOMAN^S HOME 

self to make shift alone. It was his ordina- 
tion, and we seemed too dazed to stand up 
against it. We have been here three days, and 
already Effie and I are both very restless. I 
expect in a few more days in spite of Himself 
we shall be speeding back, for there is much 
to do there. First and foremost we have to 
find another roof to cover us. 

I will write as soon as I get back, and can 
co-ordinate my thoughts. 

You and George will mourn with us, and 
I have no doubt George's sentiments on the 
subject of America entering without further 
parley will be vivified and strengthened. As 
I write I see the desolate ruins — the broken 
and desecrated household gods, the crowds 
of gaping strangers who regarded it as a spec- 
tacle without appearing to sense its tragedy. 
Other houses in the town were destroyed, but 
I have presently no knowledge or cognisance 
of them. 

All sorrow and loss must be intensive at 
the first. This certainly is. It is a poor devil- 
ish kind of sport, to rain death upon non- 
combatants and sail away immune from pun- 
ishment or reprisal. It makes women dumb 

[32] 



AN ENGLISH WOMAN'S HOME 

and men desperate. I know what is in the 
mind of Himself. Loathing of the age limit, 
longing to defy the years and be out with the 
fighting forces in the field. I shall never keep 
him after this, Cornelia. He will slip through 
another door. 

Is there a light? Yes, I remember kind faces 
I never saw before looking eloquently into 
mine, the clasp of strange but friendly hands, 
the offer of a score of homes. The gleam of 
brotherhood and sisterhood lightens the dark 
places of the earth, and defies organised and 
perfected cruelty to do its worst. 



[33] 



Ill 



It is three weeks since I wrote my last letter 
— two weeks and three days since I came back 
— no, not home, only back. We have no home 
any more — as we used to have it, though we 
have found a roof to cover us. 

I got your cablegram yesterday— it was 
dear of you to send it, but my spirit quailed 
at what it must have cost you to send such 
a lengthy despatch. Of course we knew 
how George and you would feel about it, 
and there was a curious softness in Him- 
self 's eyes when I showed it to him; we 
even discussed whether we should launch out 
into a similar extravagance. We decided, how- 
ever, that no adequate presentment of what 
we were doing could be offered in any cable- 
gram, and that we must ask you to wait for 
another letter. Himself even said, he would 
Mrrite it, but you know how he lives, and what 
stacks of unanswered ones lie in his pigeon- 
holes. I heard him say in an exasperated mo- 

[34] 



AN ENGLISH WOMAN'S HOME 

f ! 

ment, that his private and particular hell would 
be a place where there were unending streams 
of letters of no importance, which he would 
be compelled to answer by return of post. It 
was he who suggested the one word, * 'recon- 
structing," and we both hope you grasped its 
full significance. It is a big word, and it means 
a lot. Before there can be reconstruction, there 
has to be destruction, and the Hun has done 
it very thoroughly for us. 

I had better go back, I think, to where I 
left off. I told you, I remember, that after 
three days both Effie and I grew restless, and 
on the sixth we wired Himself that we were 
coming back and that he must find a place 
for us. We knew that he was still sleeping on 
a shake-down in the corner of the drawing 
room where the free winds of Heaven blew 
in upon him — and the rain when it chanced 
that way. 

You know how he loved everything in the 
house, how much of it was his individual choice, 
only the grouping left to me. And he was 
hanging on desperately to the remnant of 
his treasure house — though forbidden by of- 
ficial orders to touch anything until the repre- 
[35] 



AN ENGLISH WOMAN'S HOME 
f ^^ 

sentative from the Government Air Raid 

Insurance should come to inspect the premises, 

and the damage. 

When we arrived we found it arranged for 
us to stay at the Wrights' house. You remem- 
ber how you liked them, free, jolly, uncon- 
ventional people, who understand hospitality 
in the big sense, which makes you feel at home 
in their house. I can never forget what they 
have done for us at this time; and they were 
only two out of many. Effie remained only 
long enough to collect her kit and go back to 
her beloved Camiers — of course the house 
couldn't mean as much to her ; and for the time 
being she is detached from us and her usual 
surroundings. She went off gaily and gladly, 
not aware I am sure of the heartache she left 
behind. She will be the heroine of a great ad- 
venture when she gets back to her comrades. 
But I am sure she will never tell how fearlessly 
she carried herself through it. 

To us — that is to me, principally, is left the 
work of reconstruction. 

We have got the loan of a house from a 
kind neighbour who volunteered to find his 
family other quarters. They all felt that Him- 

[36] 



AN ENGLISH WOMAN'S HOME 

I 

self must have quarters as near as possible to 
the old place, so that his patients could easily 
find him, and his professional work be carried 
on. 

You will remember the house, a wide red 
brick many-windowed structure, standing 
sheer on the street just opposite St. Andrew's 
Church. You will particularly remember it 
because you asked me what style of architec- 
ture its porch was supposed to represent. I 
replied that I had been told it was Chinese 
Chippendale. 

You said, "Whatever is that, anyway?" 
And we both laughed. Behold us then, in- 
stalled in the house of the Chinese Chippen- 
dale porch. It's just round the corner from 
the North House, less than two minutes' walk. 
It is very strange and rather awful, I find, 
to live with other people's things. They don't 
belong to you. There is no intimate touch, 
and you don't in the least want to arrange 
them or show them to the best advantage. 

There are more chairs in this house than 
in any house I have ever seen or heard tell 
of — the sort you don't want to sit on. 

It is too full of everything for comfort, but 
[37] 



AN ENGLISH WOMAN'S HOME 

the beds are beautiful, and it is such a relief to 
have a shelter, that we never can be grateful 
enough. 

Cornelia, I wonder if you will understand 
that I was two whole days here, nearly three, 
indeed, before I dared to go round the corner. 
I simply couldn't; but at last, quite early one 
morning before many people were about, and 
Himself was safely out of the way, I stole 
round. There was a policeman at the gate, 
for there were heaps of things that could easily 
be removed by predatory hands. Wooden 
barricades had been erected everywhere, and 
what windows were left were boarded over. 
The man touched his hat to me, but did not 
open his mouth. He was an understanding 
creature, who saw how it was with me. 

Before I went inside I took a bird's-eye view 
of what had happened outside. There was 
a great gap in the wall of the kitchen garden 
which flanked the street, a gap big enough to 
let a horse and cart through. In this street 
just by the kerb you could see where the crater 
made by a shell explosion had been filled up. 
I forget whether I mentioned in my first let- 
ter how that particular shell had broken the 

[38] 



AN ENGLISH WOMAN'S HOME 

water main, causing a small deluge to add to 
the general horror of that night of desolation. 
I went into the garden through the gap, and 
round about, to the river's brim, thankful to 
find little damage, except much trampling of 
the lawns. The gardeners, I think, had gone 
to their breakfast — at least, I did not see either 
of them. All the time I kept my eyes averted 
from the house; but when I came behind the 
cedar tree, half of which was torn away, show- 
ing a hideous scar all over its beautiful body, 
I could not help seeing. I gripped myself 
tight, and ran, just ran up the sloping lawn 
across the terrace, and right in. I don't know 
how I can describe it. I feel as if I must not 
even try. Nothing had been touched. It was 
sealed, so to speak, by Government orders. A 
few things had been covered up to prevent the 
rain damaging them. It was just awful, in- 
describable, heartrending. The dining room 
was pitch dark, but a candle standing on 
the seat of a broken chair with matches be- 
side it invited me to inspection. I can't de- 
scribe what I saw, and there seemed to be 
a faint odour of sulphur and brimstone redo- 
lent of the bottomless pit. The drawing room 

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AN ENGLISH WOMAN'S HOME 

had suffered least, though part of the ceiHng 
had fallen on the piano, marring its beautiful 
top. The shake-down on which Himself had 
slept all the time we were away, stood in what 
looked like the safest corner. He had set up 
a screen to keep the night winds off his dear 
head. I just sat down there and after a min- 
ute tears came. They were the first I had 
shed and they were blessed. They relieved 
the tightness of my heart, the band across my 
brain. Afterwards I was able to climb in and 
about, taking stock and inventory of what 
had happened. I thought that with luck a 
few sticks might be retrieved, and mended up, 
but knew that all my cupboards must be bare 
of the glass and china which every housewife 
holds most dear. You remember the cupboard 
in the dining room with its priceless store of 
Waterford and old English glass? There is 
not so much as a salt cellar left. 

A cup here and there, with the handle off, 
or a gash in its side is all that is left of my 
Crown Derby, my old Worcester, my Lowes- 
toft. It is all very awful. But these are only 
things. They don't at this moment matter. 
What does matter is that the monster of war 

[40] 



AN ENGLISH WOMAN'S HOME 

has laid its foul desecrating hand on the sanc- 
tuary of my home. 

In a flash of lightning, the suffering of 
France, of Belgium and all the invaded coun- 
tries stood revealed. I understand, and I know 
why our sweet dignified old Belgian refugee 
guest, Madame Savarin, spat upon the rem- 
nants of the bomb I showed her yesterday. 



[41] 



IV 



Himself got George's second cable this 
morning. When I read it the words of the old 
hymn flashed back, "Death like a narrow sea 
divides that happy land from ours." 

I wonder if you just quite know how safe 
and free and happy you are on the other side of 
the Atlantic. I see you knit your brows, and 
hear George's language, occasionally, — I re- 
gret to say, not quite fit to grace any very gen- 
teel chronicle. I hope this is going to be a 
little more than that anyway. I will take 
back the last adjective, and beg you to thank 
God that you are safe and free for a little 
while longer. Happy I know you and your 
kind will never be until you are standing shoul- 
der to shoulder with us in this awful but glo- 
rious fight. I don't know how George's cable 
ever got through, really, on your side or ours. 
Conceive what would have happened had he 
presented it at any telegraph office in Ger- 
many. His head would have paid the forfeit. 

[42] 



AN ENGLISH WOMAN'S HOME 

I am going to set it down here just to see how 
it looks in real writing with the cold official 
script. 

There, what do you think of it? I only hope 
you are properly proud of George. 

All the Georges are nice. There is some- 
thing comforting about them. Shall I ever 
forget the other George, whom you too liked, 
who flew to us when the Heavens darkened in 
1910. He was here again at this time, the 
moment he could be of any use. When we are 
in trouble, his own affairs, however urgent, 
have to stand by. It is wonderful to have 
friends like that. They are a shield and buck- 
ler in the day of trouble. 

Well, I laughed out loud when I read 
George's cablegram and it did me so much 
good that I wish he would think up a new one 
every day, each one more violent than the 
other. It would never exceed or even fit the 
crime. Perhaps you wonder how I can joke 
and play about with words in the midst of 
what is happening. I have to, Cornelia. Don't 
you understand? If I didn't I should never 
be able to carry on? And when I sit down in 
obedience to George's express conmiand bv 

[43] 



AN ENGLISH WOMAN'S HOME 

* i 

cable to tell you every single solitary thing — 
though how he ever expects it to be allowed 
out of the country I don't know, my spirit 
positively quails. 

It is very awful, my dear — ^much more aw- 
ful than it seemed at first. I am now spend- 
ing all my days in the ruins, mostly quite alone, 
trying to retrieve what remains of our house- 
hold gods. I am allowed to do this since 
the day the Government Insurance Inspector 
came, and, having inspected, pronounced and 
assessed the damage, unsealed the debris, and 
went away — I don't doubt, quite satisfied with 
himself. I suppose there is some kind of a sys- 
tem for the appointment of such officials, per- 
haps the less they know about their job the 
better. This one had no sort of conception 
of values. I tried to explain some of them, 
but soon gave out, and let him carry on. Let 
me try to give you some idea of the tragic 
comedy. He was elderly, quiet and polite, not 
in the least sympathetic, because I am only one 
of many similarly placed, and sentiment inter- 
feres with business. His job was to minimise 
our loss. What was mine, I wonder? I'm not 
sure, but this I do know, that it hurt, hurt des- 

[44] 



AN ENGLISH WOMAN'S HOME 

perately, to have to stand by, and hear this 
well-meaning person make light of what had 
happened. Once or twice I longed to see 
Wang come bounding out of the unknown 
with his lovely face distorted, his bristles stand- 
ing up and his growls like distant thunder 
in the air, but alas, I have to go through this 
thing quite alone. Himself couldn't do it — 
even if he weren't too busy. He would just 
have a stand-up fight with the government rep- 
resentative, and that would be an end of com- 
pensation, though no doubt Himself would 
enjoy the tussle immensely. We didn't know 
quite where to begin. A table was erected in 
what is left of the library, and he spread out 
his inventory sheets and we started in. I had 
made an inventory too, and the contents of the 
dining room came under discussion first. He 
had a copy of this which had been previously 
submitted to him through our lawyer. His 
business was now to assess the amount they 
would pay. He put down the entire contents 
of the glass cupboard at ten pounds. Fifty 
dollars of your money. I gently but firmly 
pointed out that there were single pieces in it 
that had cost that. He shook his head, and 

[45] 



AN ENGLISH WOMAN'S HOME 

I ' i 

explained that in that case each piece should 
have been insured separately, as in the case 
of articles of jewellery. That was the plat- 
form from which he never departed, and I 
quickly realised that our cause was lost. Six 
dollars he allowed for that priceless old Cham- 
berlain Worcester tea service over which you 
raved so often, warning me that it should not 
be used every day. But you know we have 
never kept anything just for ornament; or 
lived in a house as a mere show place. The 
other George, of whom I've just been speak- 
ing, once told me I could make a home out of 
a cave, supposing I had only a handful of twigs 
to start with. Well, that is how we have lived. 
The Insurance gentleman was more reasonable 
about large solid articles of furniture, with 
which he seemed to be quite familiar. I don't 
suppose he observed at what an early stage 
I gave up the ghost and simply allowed him 
to carry on, and put down what figures he 
liked. He visibly brightened, however, as the 
ghastly inspection proceeded, and became more 
and more friendly every minute, but not any 
more understanding. 

I got even with him over Effie's clothes. 
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AN ENGLISH WOMAN'S HOME 

You know she wears only uniform in France, 
with one simple silk or crepe-de- Chine frock 
for the rare occasions when she goes out to 
dine, or to some informal hospital dance. So 
all her clothes were down in the wardrobe room, 
and they had been pulled out of the debris, 
and laid, a melancholy array, on the only bed 
left standing, which happened to be her own. 
You can imagine what last year's frocks look 
like, especially when they have been a good 
deal worn, and finally come through an air 
raid. A torn and crumpled mass of satin and 
lace and chiffon, stained with lime and water. 
The sight seemed to affect the official mind 
profoundly ; though my shattered treasures had 
left him cold. He asked their values, touching 
them rather pitifully; perhaps he visualised 
the radiant youth they had once enfolded, and 
I may have been misjudging him all along. 

He then asked bluntly what they had cost. 
I replied vaguely about ten pounds each. He 
put down fifty pounds without a murmur, and 
hurried out of the room as if he had had 
enough. 

It took the whole long, long day, Cornelia, 
and when he went out for his lunch 1 sat among 

[47] 



AN ENGLISH WOMAN'S HOME 

the ruins, and ate the dry sandwich Florence 
had put up for me. I fear I watered it with 
my tears. I never knew there could be so 
many tears in the world. I had none to shed 
when the Boy went away; but somehow this 
has unsealed the fount. It is a different kind 
of grief; it tears you a thousand ways; some- 
times you are shaken with an impotent rage. 
Of course it means that it will be more evanes- 
cent. 

The heart can only stand a certain number 
of vital, staggering blows. After the assessing 
business was over I was free, so to speak, of 
what remained of my own possessions, and I 
have been going round every day immediately 
after breakfast and stopping until dusk drove 
me away. Lots of people wanted to help. I 
didn't want them — I had to be alone with my 
ghosts. Florence would come round now and 
again when her work was done, or between 
whiles, and then we just stood together think- 
ing unutterable things. She is not quite a 
servant, as you know, but a dear faithful, un- 
derstanding friend who lives in the heart of us, 
and loves us every one. But mostly I was 
alone, my job to gather up the fragments — the 

[48] 



AN ENGLISH WOMAN'S HOME 

little things, and try to gauge and co-ordinate 
the whole before the removal men came to take 
everything away. I found quite a lot of things 
and carried them one by one to one of the 
pantries where a shelf remained intact. My 
greatest find, in a place with which they had no 
connection whatever, was four cut crystal bas- 
kets belonging to the old Sheffield plate 
epergne, we used as a centrepiece in the days 
when table decoration was of the heavy ornate 
type. 

How pleased I was to get them, you can't 
think! I held them tight quite a long time, 
gave them a little polish with the corner of 
my apron, and then took them to the pantry 
shelf aforesaid, where I regarded them with 
a species of adoration as the nucleus of some 
future glass cupboard collection, when war 
has ceased to be. 

But I think it is ordained that for me there 
shall be no new glass cupboard. When I got 
back next day, two of them had gone. I 
pinched myself, wondering whether, like some 
of the college boys after a night out, I had 
been seeing double. 

Then my friend, the big policeman, told me 
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AN ENGLISH WOMAN'S HOME 

he had turned out some well-dressed people 
wandering through the ruins after I had left. 
It was no common thief who took these little 
things. There were articles of more value be- 
side them. No, it was some horrible woman 
who coveted a souvenir from the Zeppelined 
house, and took what she fancied most. I 
rather wish she had taken the four, then I 
might have amused myself by dreaming that 
they had been found. 

It was a mean cold-blooded unsisterly kind 
of theft. It almost deserves to have the ad- 
jective Hunnish attached as a label. 

Every day this sad task of mine has been 
going on, for more than a week, and now, to- 
morrow, this being Sunday, the workmen are 
coming in and the removal men, and the few 
sticks, at least such as are worth removing, 
will be taken away to a furniture hospital 
for repair. 

Your housewifely soul, already rent, I am 
sure, by this recital of my woes will be still 
further exercised by a brief description of 
what happened to my store cupboard. It was 
very full this autumn, owing to the garden 
abundance aforesaid, and our conspicuous in- 



AN ENGLISH WOMAN'S HOME 

dustry and success in bottling, preserving and 
pickling, — the shelves simply groaned with 
good things, and now it is all one inextricable 
sticky mass of jam, and fruit, and broken 
glass, and lathe and plaster. You could not 
imagine anything more disgusting. It is part 
of the needless waste of war — a little bit, how- 
ever, that just comes right home. 

Just one more straw, surely the last. Friend 
Government Assessor valued the stock of my 
store cupboard at ten shillings, two dollars and 
a half. And I just let him, because it was so 
funny, and there didn't seem to be any use tell- 
ing him any more about anything. 

When I write again I expect it will be all 
over and the lid shut down on the place that 
was once a home. 

I sat a little while to-day on the mossy wall 
beside the lily pond, one of your numerous 
garden thrones. 

Do you remember the day they cleaned it 
out, and your excitement over the queer little 
black fresh water cray fish the men took out 
with their hands and laid on the grass while 
they swept and scoured the concrete bottom 
of the pond? They crawled about so painfully, 

[51] 



AN ENGLISH WOMAN'S HOME 

poor things, and if they thought at all, I sup- 
pose they must have imagined it the end of the 
world. Then how pleased you were, and they 
too, I expect, when they were put back, and 
the lovely clean water from the upper river 
ran in on them. It is very clear to-day, and 
there is a crooning sound in the voice of the 
waterfall — it sounds almost like a dirge. Sum- 
mer is quite gone, and the yellowing leaves 
are drifting down everywhere. Some of them 
have camouflaged the horrid burned places the 
incendiary bombs made in the grass. A few 
late roses hang about rather wistfully, but 
there doesn't seem to be any hope anywhere. 
We don't quite know what is going to happen, 
whether this house is going to be rebuilt, and 
we come back to it. 

There are immense legal and technical diffi- 
culties in a situation for which no precedent or 
legislation exists. We do not own, but only 
lease the property, and at the moment don't 
know where our responsibility begins or ends. 

Himself is wrestling with the problem, and 
the little lines are gathering about his eyes 
and mouth. 

He does not say very much at all, and he 
[52] 



AN ENGLISH WOMAN'S HOME 
r 

won't go near the North House any more. I 

know he can't bear it. 

You and I have often talked of how dear 
they are, and how they never, never grow up, 
but are just boys all their days. 

They can do the fighting, but they can't 
do the enduring. That is our bit. 

I am trying to do mine, all I know how, but 
I am hard hit this time, Cornelia. I am on 
my knees. 



[58] 



Such a lot has happened since I wrote last. 
I am beginning to regard these letters as a 
real and faithful record of this strange phase 
of our life. I know how faithfully you will 
keep them as I do yours. They may come 
in handy one day to the person who may gather 
up the fragments of my achievement — when 
Finds has been written across the last page. 

You see, Cornelia, here we have to keep 
rather quiet and lift a gallant head — Noblesse 
oblige has to be the watchword. This for two 
reasons, that so many people require bolster- 
ing, who if they detected any weakening in 
this direction would feel that the front line had 
broken. 

Then it is necessary for our inward life. 
You know how much I have been through, and 
unless I had held my head high right along 
why then, it would just have meant the end 
of all things. But oh, how we can be misunder- 
stood I 

[55] 



AN ENGLISH WOMAN'S HOME 

In the dark days of 1910 I met a woman in 
the street about three months after the Boy 
had passed, and after we had exchanged greet- 
ings she remarked with a charming smile, 
*'How nice that you have got over it so easily." 
My smile was a little sickly as I replied stead- 
ily, *'Yes, isn't it very nice?" 

I did not see anything very clearly for quite 
a while after I had passed on. 

Just for a moment, I wondered whether it 
had been all wrong to bury that irreparable 
loss so deep that nobody suspected its ex- 
istence, as a loss. I had been rather proud 
because I had been able to "carry on," but 
these careless words suddenly awoke in me a 
passion of remorse lest I had been disloyal to 
his precious memory. Then I just laughed 
weakly as I wiped my nose and eyes. Am I 
not his mother, and do mothers ever forget 
or prove disloyal? Another of "that sort of 
person" said to me on the morning of the raid 
as I was hurrying to the bank to get some 
money, "So sorry; you have had bad luck, 
haven't you, since you came here?" Have we, 
I wonder? And what is luck anyway? You 
and I both know there is no such thing. 

[56] 



AN ENGLISH WOMAN'S HOME 

There have been developments since I wrote 
you, chiefly regarding our tenancy of the 
North House. It happens that under the terms 
of our Enghsh lease we are responsible for 
this damage, and will have to rebuild for the 
proprietor at our own expense. Preposterous, 
you exclaim! So do we, and Himself has got 
his mind firmly made up that he will fight it 
out. Some of our advisers would like us to take 
it to the law courts and make a test case of it, 
but our adviser-in-chief — that dear friend and 
great law lord who made such fun of your 
Nipigon fishing story at our big dinner party, 
is strongly against it. He says, "Pay up what- 
ever it costs. The case simply bristles with 
litigious points and I see it going on indefi- 
nitely and finally coming up before me at the 
House of Lords." Himself is in fighting trim, 
however, and the decision will rest with him. 

Meanwhile we have got to do something 
about our future, as we can't go on living in 
this furnished house, which gives me the queer 
unhappy feeling of not belonging anywhere in 
particular. The kind neighbour who offered 
us the shelter had another proposition, that he 
should vacate altogether and have us take over 

[57] 



AN ENGLISH WOMAN'S HOME 

his lease. We are going to do it, but will have 
to wait some time before the transaction is 
completed, because we have no furniture ex- 
cept the broken stuff which is being mended 
up at the furniture dealer's in the town. 

I have to go down almost daily to consult 
and decide whether this or that article is worth 
repairing. It usually resolves itself into an 
argument with the expert. The more he says 
it can't be done, the more I want it done. Of 
course, it is our dearest treasures that have 
received the deadliest damage. Meanwhile, 
my dear, all these matters merely fade into in- 
significance beside the one great tremendous 
yet glorious fact. Himself is going to the 
war. 

You know how hard and often he has ham- 
mered on the War Office doors, and how his 
age was hurled at him, and he was bidden go 
and carry on the good work he was doing in 
his own town. Well, he has got a commission 
at last through the intervention of an old col- 
lege friend who occupies the exalted position 
of A.D.M.S. to a part of the Northern Army. 
That means that he is the Director of Medical 
Service. Himself will be attached to the Black 

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AN ENGLISH WOMAN'S HOME 

Watch and report himself first to the Head- 
quarters in Perthshire. 

Is he pleased about it? He does not say 
much, but he has been far more restless since 
the raid. Am I pleased? Cornelia, honestly 
I don't know. Every woman wants her man 
to be in this tremendous fight, but I think I 
am a little afraid. 

Our household is sadly reduced. Two have 
gone to munitions from indoor service, and the 
gardeners have been called up. We don't need 
them mercifully, as we have no garden now; 
only a backyard. Life is being gradually 
shorn of some of its more dignified material 
attributes. No doubt they are the things that 
don't matter, but some of them we loved, and 
parting from them hurts. 

This morning I read a wonderful verse in 
Hebrews. Every bit of the Bible takes on new 
meanings these days. I can't recall the chap- 
ter at this moment. I daresay, you will re- 
member it at once. "Yet once more, signifieth 
the removal of these things that are shaken — 
as of things that are made, that those things 
which cannot be shaken may remain." What 
do these words mean quite? Have I been 

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AN ENGLISH WOMAN'S HOME 

clinging too frankly to the things that are 
made, and must they all go one by one, so that 
I may realise and grip the things that cannot 
be shaken? 

Perhaps that is the war in a nut-shell. It 
is a poignant, almost a terrifying thought. 

He went this morning, Cornelia, New 
Year's morning, "in a blast of Januar wind 
that blew hansel in on Robin." He looked 
so dear and splendid in his perfect-fitting uni- 
form (you know he never leaves anything of 
that kind to chance and would go without food 
any day if the fit of his clothes depended on 
it) . I was worshipping all the time and Cook, 
our faithful chauffeur, left the car at the door 
to come and see whether he could help with 
the leggings which were rather stiff and new — 
and just to take a general view. He was the 
picture of desolation and woe. Old servants 
don't like those cataclysms. They have no re- 
serve weapons to deal with them. They are 
conservative to the innermost fibre of their 
being. 

At last they drove away to catch the north- 
going train at the junction. 

[60] 



AN ENGLISH WOMAN'S HOME 

I have often envied other women when I 
heard them speak with conscious pride of their 
men at the front — but oh, Cornelia, when the 
door was shut and the toot of the horn echoed 
faintly in my ears, I forgot to be proud — and 
was nothing at all but a lone woman, left deso- 
late in the house of her dreams. 



[61] 



VI 



Reconstruction is now my job. Every- 
thing that could be removed from the wreck- 
age at the North House has been removed and 
the ruins left to the owls and the bats. The re- 
trieval was conducted during days of pitiless 
rain which accentuated the desolation. But it 
is all accomplished now, and I don't go around 
there any more. 

We had twenty tons of coal buried in the 
debris of the old stabling, where it was housed, 
and the police came to tell me it would have 
to be removed, if I wanted to get the benefit 
of any, as a steady pilfering was going on. It 
was a tremendous job but with coal at its 
present price an effort had to be made to get 
it out. It has just been put down in the cellar 
of this house and the transfer cost four pounds. 

In the absence of Himself, I have con^ 
eluded the arrangements for an actual pos- 
session of this house, which we have taken for 
a term of three years. No more leaseholds 

[62] 



AN ENGLISH WOMAN'S HOME 

for me in this country, and though a casually- 
rented house gives one an odd feeling of in- 
security — anything may happen in three years. 

There will have to be a little papering and 
painting done, just to make it clean and whole- 
some, and then I will bring back my poor 
sticks from the repairing shops, and group 
them in this strange new setting. It is really 
quite a nice house, with some points the other 
lacked. A great advantage when one has a 
depleted staif is a kitchen on the ground floor. 
It is a thoroughly bad kitchen, dark and 
gloomy, and the hot water arrangements, and 
facilities for cooking are positively the worst 
I, an experienced housewife, have ever encoun- 
tered. If I had not two specimens of the salt 
of the earth in these regions beyond, the situ- 
ation would be impossible. They are quite 
selfless, as far as their own comfort and ac- 
commodations are concerned. They think 
only of us. Such personal devotion takes the 
edge ofl* many sorrows. 

Already I have a scheme which perhaps in 
the far future will convert this house into a 
real home. How ineradicable is the instinct 
to reconstruct in the human breast! That it 

[63] 



AN ENGLISH WOMAN'S HOME 

cannot be killed has been incontestably proved 
by the persistence with which our poor French 
and Belgian confreres creep back to their rav- 
aged fatherland and begin again. 

Himself builded better than he knew when 
he began to talk of reconstructing the moment 
the shock was over. He is always distressingly 
right in the fundamentals, and our small in- 
ternal wars have invariably been caused by my 
refusal to admit it. But life is not all funda- 
mental, Cornelia, it needs camouflage, needs it 
desperately. All women know it. 

There are gleams of glory. The finest is 
the love of the people for my lover. A poor 
woman rushed up to me to-day to ask the latest 
news of him. From her I learned that they 
call him "The Friend of the Poor." If I were 
to die to-morrow, Cornelia, I could ask no 
sweeter epitaph. 

I have decided that the house is not bad at 
all, and I am beginning to sit up and take a 
little notice. Only I must not look out of the 
back windows. 

You remember the enchanting vistas spread 
before the green bedroom, and the study win- 

[64] 



AN ENGLISH WO^VIAN'S HOME 

dow around the corner. There was no fret of 
the sph'it that could not be healed and com- 
forted, always there was beauty to lift you up, 
and a message, no matter how bleak the pros- 
pect elsewhere. It was that dear intimate kind 
of a garden where there was something for 
every mood. 

Doctor Horton once came to dine and sleep 
when speaking at a meeting here, and at six 
next morning he was out roaming about, to the 
disquiet of the staff. He had visions of a 
hermit's study cell in the ruined tower by the 
waterfall, and wondered why I did not estab- 
lish a wTiting room out of doors. 

I explained that my writing was a stern 
business which would admit of no distractions. 
I have found that even a very comfortable 
study is a bad place for the cultivation of 
thought. A wooden bench and bare walls, or 
the "fender end" of my childhood and a block 
on my knee produced the best results. 

But to return to the only thing that matters 
at the moment. I am reduced to a cabbage 
patch. Even that is a misnomer, for there is 
not even a "Kailyaird runt" i.e. remnant, on 
that little ugly bit of mother earth. 

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It is a slice of No Man's Land that has 
never grown anything but weeds. It is re- 
lieved by a background of trees, our own 
chestnuts, Cornelia, whose glory of pink-and- 
white cones we used to watch till they were 
mirrored in all their majesty in the clean 
depths of the backwater above the fall. 

When I want positively to revel in heart- 
break, to be homesick and unashamedly miser- 
able (which I fear I am most of the time, since 
Himself retired from the scene), I go to the 
uttermost edge of my No Man's Land, where 
I can hear the rush and tumble of the water- 
fall, though I cannot see its foaming tears. 

To descend to mundane things, let me ex- 
plain that this house belonged to a master- 
builder who once upon a time had his work- 
shop and all the paraphernaha of his business 
in the backyard. After a while he secured 
more ambitious premises, and carried away all 
the plant, leaving us the legacy of a concrete 
floor in the very middle of the patch. 

So before we can obey the Food Administra- 
tor's order to plant potatoes, the concrete will 
have to be broken up and removed by the hand 

of George Cook. 

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His face was a study when I explained that 
as the young doctor preferred to drive the car 
himself, his, George's, job would be to make 
the desert blossom like the rose. He looked at 
me, and then at it, queerly, with his one active 
eye; pulled his forelock with rather a grim 
smile, and went forth for a pick. Inside of an 
hour he had started on that task and now the 
thud of the pick is the music to which I waken 
of a morning. Sometimes consulting together 
(I am beginning to be interested, though I 
try not to be), we doubt very much whether 
the concrete plus the ineradicable root of an 
obnoxious weed called horseradish, will ever 
be gotten out in time for a spring crop. But 
Cook is very dogged; and the joy of the crea- 
tor is beginning to lay hold on him. I find it 
is a better day's work when I potter round the 
patch, sympathising and anathematising turn 
about. Anyhow, the work of reconstruction, 
as ordained by Himself, is going forward 
cheerfully. The workmen are in possession of 
most of the rooms, and I am just about as un- 
comfortable and as busy as the most active 
housewife could desire to be. 

My war-work has had to call a halt till I 
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get through with this business of home mak- 
ing ; that being the duty that lies nearest. You 
think I'm not saying so much as usual about 
Himself? I can't, because, oh, Cornelia, he 
seems to have passed out of my life! I get 
his dear letters, but they are all about people 
I have never seen and don't want to see, be- 
cause they are there with him, seeing him 
every day, and I am not. He is loving the 
life — you know how he would — and the boys 
with whom he lives in the mess, himself the 
biggest boy of all. 

In every letter I can sense the buoyancy of 
spirit that comes with the laying down of re- 
sponsibility. Here he had so much, and now 
he is only a nut in the great machine of war, 
and so long as he does his duty and obeys or- 
ders he can have an easy and comfortable mind. 

He is stationed at the moment up in what is 
the frozen north, but they are the hills of home, 
and he is assuredly content. He is not even 
homesick, though always asking when I am 
coming. I am waiting for Effie's next leave, 
when we will go up together. Meanwhile I 
must hold the fort here, or all the wrong wall 
papers will go up, and there might even be 

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structural undoing if the workmen were left 
to their own sweet wills. But it is an empty 
life, Cornelia, out of which the soul has gone. 
Even the picture in uniform, on my desk, the 
man of the house at war, fails to afford the 
uplift or the comfort once imagined. I must 
get through with this reconstruction job as it 
affects material things, and start the recon- 
struction of my own inner life. I, too, must 
go to the war. 



[69] 



VII 

I HAD your dear letter yesterday and have 
every word of it by heart, even George's post- 
script. I always knew him to be an under- 
standing creature, but his knowledge of hu- 
man beings, more especially the heart of 
woman, is a wee bit uncanny. 

Is he your product, Cornelia, or is he just 
the American husband at his best? It is long 
since you told me (it was on that wonderful 
testing first visit which we essayed fearfully — 
not sure whether it would grapple us to one 
another with hooks of steel or merely end in a 
polite parting with regrets on either side) that 
English husbands are not properly brought 
up. You imagined, or really perceived, in 
them a lordly air of superiority — and even 
said that some of our households bear the im- 
press of the feudal age in which our race was 
cradled. 

I remember wanting to say that the criti- 
cism did not^ and could not, apply to Scotch 

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husbands. But perhaps wisely I held my 
peace. 

We left it, what is called in Scotland **a 
moot point'* — and a moot point, I guess, it 
must remain. Anyway, wherever George got 
his knowledge, whether natural or acquired, 
he has gripped the essence of this thing when 
he calls separation the supreme test of the 
bond. I am going to write to him when I am 
through with this, and you are not to see that 
letter, nor yet ask to see it — I need him — I 
want the man's point of view. 

What is this all about anyway? I think I 
hear you say with the uplift of the brows which 
is your very own. 

You, in America, with your semi-detached 
ideas of marriage, which enable you to bear six 
months' or a year's separation without any 
sinking of heart, or vague questionings, must 
naturally find it difficult to realise our point 
of view. With us marriage is "for keeps," as 
you say, and when upheaval comes, it seems 
always to spell disaster. 

Perhaps our theory is all wrong, and an un- 
warrantable interference with the freedom of 
the individual. But I can't be happy thinking 

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of Himself with a whole lot of new interests 
I can't share, making shoals of friends, which 
is as easy to him as breathing the air, friends 
whom probably I shall never see. He can 
guess pretty well what I am about, but I can't 
visualise him. Just think of the hundreds of 
wives, and of other women who are feeling 
like this, and who are at war with the war, 
that has brought it about. 

There is another side to the picture, the side 
that proves the part truth of your assertion 
that we don't bring up our husbands properly. 
Let me present a little cameo of the times in 
which we live. I was at a war tea at a 
women's club in London the other day, and 
there met an old acquaintance I had not seen 
for some time. She was quite middle-aged — 
and had been rather dowdy, not paying much 
attention to her clothes. Before I spoke to 
her, I was arrested by a subtle change in her 
outward appearance. She had a smart suit 
on, and wore a distinctly youthful hat with a 
rakish air. 

The thing interested me, and I had to find 
out its meaning. 

When we exchanged greetings she informed 
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me that her husband, retn^ed, had gone back 
to professional work, which meant that he 
could not live at home, but at a military Head- 
quarters. 

I sympathised and asked how she got 
through the lonely days which I was feeling 
so desperately. She looked at me queerly 
through her shrewd candid grey eyes. 

"Oh, I'm not lonely," she assured me. "In 
fact, entre nous, I'm having the time of my 
life." 

"Tell me about it," I asked breathlessly, and 
she told 

"Well, I go out and in as I like, do all 
the things I have always wanted to do, but 
could not. Nobody now asks me where I've 
been or what I've spent. In fact, I don't 
really think I have any more use for Dan." 

There, Cornelia — it will make you smile, 
perhaps, but there is a tragedy behind it. 
Poor old Dan! comfortable, complacent, no 
doubt inflated by a new sense of his own im- 
portance because his country still needs him, 
to what strange and hostile atmosphere will 
he return! I can imagine him rubbing his 

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eyes and wiping his pince nez and saying, 
"Tut, tut, this will never do!" 

But he won't be able to put back the clock. 
He'll have to march to the new marching tune. 

I foresee ructions in the household of Dan. 

Meanwhile, she is having the time of her 
life! 

It makes no appeal to me, because I have 
always been able to have the time of my life, 
as she understands it. I have gone in and 
out without let or hindrance, none daring to 
make me afraid. And now, I am just a lonely 
creature like a bit of drift on the shore. 

There is another side to which George calls 
the supreme test — a horrible sordid side. 
Hear it now. When I went to France first in 
1915, to talk to the boys, I was asked whether 
I would go to a small forage camp in a God- 
forsaken place away up near Abbeville, be- 
yond the British Headquarters. It was a 
kind of No Man's Land which nobody ever vis- 
ited. Lectures and concert parties passed 
it by. I said, "Of course I'll go, it is what 
I've come out for." 

So Effie and I got up at four o'clock in the 
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t . ' ■ ' ' '■ 

morning to catch the only available civilian 
train leaving Rouen for "up the line." The 
distance could not be far, according to the 
map, but it took us till three o'clock in the 
afternoon to get there. We were shunted into 
sidings to let troop trains and ammunition 
trains and hospital trains go by, and there 
were no passengers in ours except French offi- 
cers and other people connected with the war. 
No women, but we two. I was so thankful 
to have Effie. Her gay inconsequence, her 
complete disregard of everything but the great 
adventure, helped us over every stony bit of 
the ground. Gendarmes, sentries with fixed 
bayonets, grumpy passport and permit offi- 
cials — she captured them all. Youth is quite 
invincible, and when its smile is sweet like hers 
obstacles melt like mist before the rising sun. 
If I had even attempted that wonderful jour- 
ney through the war zone without her I should 
either have been shot as a spy, or interned for 
the duration. It is short shrift for the middle- 
aged and the ordinary beings who can't ex- 
plain their business in the area where death and 
destiny walk side by side. Well, in course of 

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• . . . . . . .1 . . , „ ■ ■ — . 

time, through several minor adventures, we 
reached our destination. 

A sturdy little divinity student from Aber- 
deen was holding the fort there for the Y. M. 
C. A. and holding it well. When he went 
first to give them a bit of humanizing Christian 
comradeship, he had to sleep with a revolver 
under his pillow, fully aware that any night 
he might get his throat cut. These men were 
not soldiers, though they wore khaki, but 
rough east-enders, dock laborers, most of 
them, with lawless anarchic blood in their 
veins. They had spent the major part of their 
lives rebelling against law and order. They 
were the husbands of some of the women whose 
faces broke your heart when I took you to my 
big mothers' meeting "down east" two years 
ago. The fortunes of war had cut them off 
from the grime and glory of the Barking 
Road, and those in authority found them a 
tough proposition in that sweet valley in the 
pleasant land of France. 

We pottered about the camp till nightfall, 
when the men gathered into the tent to hear 
the woman who had brought them a message 
from home. 

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I 



AN ENGLISH WOMAN'S HOME 

I knew when I stood up in front of them 
and saw their faces, looking grim and unrelent- 
ing through the haze of tobacco smoke and 
the reek of the oil lamp, that I was up against 
something, and would need not only all my art, 
but the grace of God to help me through. 

But I got them after a bit, got them in the 
hollow of my hand — playing on their hearts 
with memories of home, though all the time 
I knew the kind of homes they had left, and 
how hard most of them had made it there for 
the women they had vowed to love, honour and 
cherish. 

When the talk w^as over they crowded round 
and one particularly unattractive person with 
a scowling eye inquired whether he could have 
a word with me privately. We managed it 
later on in a remote corner, hard by one of the 
evil-smelling lamps. 

" 'Ere, missus," he began. "Do yer 'appen 
to know the Barkin' Road?" 

I eagerly asserted my complete familiarity 
with the Barking Road, the Kings' Highway 
to Dockland! I was even ready to proclaim 
it the finest thoroughfare in the world. 

"See here, then, Lidy, thet was good talk, 
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but it don't go far enough. Maybe I weren't 
all I should a bin w'en I was back there, but 
my missus she ain't played the game, she's 
played it low down on me since I've been in 
this 'ere war. I ain't had no letters from 'er 
for over four months, and I carnt 'ear nuthink 
about the four kids nah, but a bloke wot lives 
dahn our street sends me word that she's sold 
up the whole bloomin' shoot and nobody knows 
where she is, and the kids is in the Union. An' 
I carnt git out of this blarsted 'ole to see to the 
kids and give 'er wot for. Wot are ye goin' 
to do about it, Lidy?" That was what peo- 
ple call a tough proposition, Cornelia, the 
whole tragedy of one-half of the war in a nut- 
shell. 

I did what I could. I tried to comfort him 
and took down all the particulars in the note 
book already bulging with behests, which it 
will probably take me the rest of my natural 
life to fulfil. 

When I got back to England I made the 
inquiries, put the Salvation Army angel on the 
track, and found it all just as he described. 
His missus has never been found — she has 
gone down in the underworld, urged there by 

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the very same temptations which made Dan's 
wife say she had no more use for Dan. Tast- 
ing independence of action and of purse for 
the first time, she lost her sense of proportion. 
With the well-to-do, it is the sweets of inde- 
pendence that is testing them — with the other 
sort, the lure of the separation allowances, 
which means more money in hand than they 
had ever dreamed of before in their poor, nar- 
row, sordid lives. 

There's something all wrong with life, Cor- 
nelia. It will have to be straightened out and 
evened up, and the poor and the oppressed will 
have to taste a little of the glory and the 
beauty and the dignity of life. 

Perhaps that is what the war is for. 

Meanwhile the poor bond! 

It will have to be recast in the new world 
we are coming to. 

How many of us will stand the test? 

Himself has been back on his first leave. 
It is Sunday night, he has just gone, and the 
door is shut again; leaving me inside while he 
is speeding away back to the unknown. It has 
been a lovely heartbreaking time. But he is 

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detached, Cornelia, he doesn't belong any- 
more. I had made superhuman efforts to get 
the whole house in order, sitting up late at 
night to cover cushions and put in all the fix- 
ings that make the real home. He was very 
polite, looking industriously at everything, 
and all the time his eyes were not seeing my 
poor little attempts at home-making — ^but 
something else far away. All he said was, *'It's 
very nice, but I have all I want in a tent." He 
didn't mean to be cruel ; he was only gripped 
by his new life, saw the mess table with his 
comrades round about him — the route march 
— the sham attack, all the pomp and prepara- 
tion for the real war they are going out to 
presently. The things no woman can share; 
or can be asked to share! 

It is the man's life, the big grey splendid 
thing which we are outside of, not once in a 
while, but forever and ever. 

He has changed, Cornelia — not to me, but 
he has gotten the vision of the fierce arena 
where men are fighting and dying that Liberty 
may live; has not only gotten the vision, but 
has become part of it. 

And I am only the woman left by the fire- 
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side. I don't see the glory of the war as I 
used. The envy I felt towards the women 
who spoke proudly of their men at the front 
has died utterly. I don't want him at the 
front. I want him here desperately, every 
minute of the time. He doesn't feel like that. 
He can do without me. 

You said somewhere that since George 
heard that Himself has gone, he is, like Car- 
lyle, "gey ill to live with," cursing the waiting 
policy of the President, the everlasting fram- 
ing of notes full of dignified protest about 
nothing in particular. 

He wants to have a hand in the great big 
game, I know. But if the time should come, 
soon or late, when your roads and streets shall 
resound with the beat of armed and arming 
men, put the lid on George. Never mind how, 
but just do it. 

It is hell! 



[81] 



VIII 

I AM writing this quite a long way from my 
base. The Black Watch, to which regiment 
Himself now belongs, has been sent to the East 
coast and I am here in a billet with him for 
a few weeks. 

It is the loveliest old city, interwoven with 
all the ancient history, when Flemings and 
Danes and all kinds of weird aliens invaded or 
flocked to these shores. It is beloved by your 
American tourists ; if George and you did not 
differ from all American tourists whatsoever, 
you would have been here long ago, and could 
tell me far more about it than is to be obtained 
out of the most authenticated guide book. 
You, however, have always preferred to take 
your travel in microscopic doses, to make 
a little bit your intimate and dear possession 
for all time. I am surprised to find this old 
Norwich such a noble city, and I should love 
to show you the ancient landmarks. It is full 
of treasures, of values which cannot be told, 

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or was, rather, for the powers that be have 
mysteriously spirited them away, and the 
priceless stained glass windows have been 
boarded up — ^the very most priceless of all has 
been taken down. The fate of Rheims and 
Louvain and Ypres has made the city fathers 
wise. But it is an omen, Cornelia, which 
keeps me awake o' nights and gives me the 
jumps when I hear the streets resound with 
the tramp of armed men in the silent watches — 
Himself having been summoned with the rest 
to "stand to" as they call it, with their faces 
toward the sea. 

The boys have an expression which sums up 
these frequent forced marches — they call it 
* 'getting the wind up." The wind is up here 
more often than I like it, and when I hear 
quite sober quiet matrons tell what they will 
do if the dread moment ever comes when the 
Hun invades these shores, I have no strength 
in me. I am not brave at all, Cornelia, some- 
thing has been left out of my composition. 
This is the most vulnerable part of our far- 
flung coast, and there is a great watching army 
right along. Those whose duty it will be to 
guide the civilian population in case of emer- 

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p—ii— — ^— ^— — 1™^—— — ^™^— ^^^^— '^■■^■^^^■— ■■^■^'■'— — — — ^ 

gency have what you call the schedule ready, 
and nothing will be left to chance. I don't 
want to be here when it happens, my dear; this 
nameless lurking fear that never sleeps takes 
the edge off the joy of being with him. He 
has no belief at all in the landing of German 
troops in England. You know he is an in- 
curable optimist about the War. He consid- 
ers that we are invincible and that victory is 
only a matter of time. It must be a delight- 
ful atmosphere to live and move and have 
your being in ; it helps to keep one young. He 
can sleep through anything and only grumbles 
when he has not enough of sleep. 

My war experiences are widening. Yester- 
day we had a bombardment from the sea — 
not of Norwich, of course — if you remember 
your geography you will know that it is not 
possible — but of the coast places, Yarmouth 
and Lowestoft, less than twenty miles away. 

I was awakened about four o'clock in the 
morning by a dull boom and the sharp rattle 
of the windows. Having lived so much beside 
naval guns in our own special Kingdom by 
the Sea, I knew exactly what it was and shook 
Himself. "That's naval guns," I said. 

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> < — ^— — — — — — I I — 1— ^—»« 

"There's a fight going on quite close by.'* 
"Nonsense," he answered. "You're dream- 
ing — go to sleep." I could not, and rose early 
to hear from the little maid, who had heard it 
from the milkman, that the coast places had 
been bombarded and much damage done. 
You know how rumours fly and how disasters 
are multiplied and intensified, as they pass 
from mouth to mouth. Himself came back 
from the mess with little news beyond the facts, 
and I was glad when a friend rang me up to 
ask if I'd like to go down to the coast with her 
in her car. 

Of course I liked it, and we took some of 
the bigger children with us — it was Easter 
week and they were all at home from school, 
round-eyed, eager, fearless about the war, 
which to them is nothing but the Great Adven- 
ture. We hardly expected to get through the 
mihtary barrier, but we did, and saw what had 
been done. 

It is the same pitiful tale of destruction 
which follows in the Zeppelin's track, senseless, 
horrible war on defenceless folk who have little 
or nothing to protect them. These delightful 
east-coast watering places are all ruined, be- 

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I —n 

cause everybody who could afford it has "quit" 
as you say, and the boarding houses and hotels 
are empty, and will be for the "duration." 

It was very typically British to find the 
front thronged with spectators, women wheel- 
ing babies in perambulators, all gazing upon 
the scene, but not apparently frightened at the 
wreckage. The story was soon told. Some 
battle-cruisers suddenly appeared about six 
miles out and opened fire for twenty minutes 
or so, and then ran. There was no patrol to 
attack them, if it was anybody's business to 
be on the outside there, they were off guard. 
The only criticism one is inclined to make is 
that it could not happen in Germany. 

This pleasant East Anglian land is lovely 
beyond compare in the exquisite spring un- 
folding, but the blight of war seems over all. 

They are getting ready great camps nearer 
the sea, and the troops will be taken out of 
their winter billets. 

Himself is very busy inspecting and report- 
ing, and generally proving as efficient and 
thorough in military life as he is in civilian. 

I begin to understand the lure of the life. 
There is perpetual movement, excitement, ex- 

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AN ENGLISH WOMAN'S HOME 

pectation. There is a certain kind of social 
life, lunches and dinners and other entertain- 
ment offered by hospitable people to the in- 
comers, the great Highland host that has in- 
vaded their stately precincts. There are lots 
of little war brides here with their young sol- 
dier husbands, and maturer matrons, some of 
them with considerable families, living in fur- 
nished houses trying to make a bit of home for 
the soldier men, and very interested them- 
selves, though it is all so strange and incon- 
venient and far from home. 

We have delightful rooms in a comfortable 
house; it is quite a rest for me, and I am get- 
ting through with my next book. 

When they get into camp I shall have to go 
back home to the loneliness that is only com- 
panioned by fear. 

We are kept in inky darkness here on ac- 
count of the frequent air raids. A month's 
imprisonment without the option of a fine is 
the sentence for striking a match in the street. 
The authorities are lynx-eyed and vigilant, 
their reward is that this beautiful old city in 
its historic setting has remained immune 
through more than a score of attacks from the 

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^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ " - ■ - 

air. It is protected, too, by the trees, which 
add so much to its beauty. 

It has been an experience, Cornelia, it is all 
part of the strange upheaval men call war, 
the outward fringes of it only, yet how deeply, 
inextricably woven in with the whole woof of 
life! 

Every day one hears of the most extraordi- 
nary war marriages, rushed into, too often, 
after a few days' acquaintance, without a 
thought given to the awful indissolubility of 
the bond. For whatever the experience of 
matrimony may be like, you can never be as 
you were before. Already there has been much 
repenting at leisure, and when the glamour 
of the khaki is off, the tragedy will deepen and 
enfold the helpless creatures who cannot free 
themselves, and have no basis for a future. 

There are scandals, too, and tragedies too 
deep for tears, broken vows, faithless lovers 
and husbands, all the cursed things born of 
abnormal situations, and the kind of feverish 
false atmosphere created by war. 

These things cry as loud to Heaven as the 
blood and sorrow from the battlefields, and 

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f III I > — ■ 

make thoughtful people reiterate the prayer, 
Oh, Lord! how long? 

They are what we call "after the war prob- 
lems." Some of them will never be tackled — 
there is no machinery known to the human 
understanding capable of tackling them — 
many will just have to be buried deep, and no 
cross left to mark the burying place. 

There stands out for me here the joy of 
comi^adeship as men understand it, gripping 
it to their souls with hooks of steel. 

We don't have it, Cornelia — we women, I 
mean — it is something we do not get, nor per- 
haps understand. It is not that we are too 
petty, but rather, I think, because we have 
to keep ourselves more detached and selfless 
for all that men need and must have from us, 
if the Family is to be held together. 

I have never seen anything more lovely 
than the tie between Himself and the young 
officers, these splendid boys, pictures, every 
one in their Kilts, and all the panoply of war. 
Old enough to be father to any one of them, 
he has kept the boy's heart, so that he is 
not only with them at the mess, but one of 
them. He is so wise and tender with them, 

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that they come to him in every trouble. It 
makes me weep, and yet feel so proud, but 
not in the least surprised. Did I ever tell you 
about the bundle of letters, docketed, dated 
and tied up, I found among the Boy's things 
after he went away? His father's letters — 
which revealed to me a side of Himself I had 
never seen. 

They ought to be printed, but I suppose 
other fathers write the same kind of letters to 
their sons at schools, letters that help the sen- 
sitive young souls to grapple with the mys- 
teries of life. It is all part of their nature — 
the bit that isn't ours — comradeship between 
man and man! When found between father 
and son, it is the most beautiful thing in life. 

You will be stunned by the news of Kitch- 
ener's passing. It created a panic here among 
the common folk. 

I met a woman in the street, with a crushed 
copy of the evening paper under her arm, 
wringing her hands and crying out that "all 
was lost." It shows what a hold he had upon 
the popular imagination. His has been, and 
is, a name to conjure with. The product of his 
vast personal magnetism is on every fighting 

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front, and in every training camp at home. 
He was a great man — but his work was done 
— others will reap where he has sown. 

The memorial services in the Cathedral here 
were fitting and fine, massed and muffled 
bands, a dense crowd of khaki-colored men. 
Generals and high military personages galore, 
all the pride and pomp of war. But Kitchener 
will live in the hearts of the people — his true 
memorial is to be found in the serried rows of 
crosses in France and Flanders where so much 
of the army he called into being lies in conse- 
crated dust that is "forever England." 

I am back again in old Hertford to find let- 
ters urging my return to France. 

It is sweet to hear, not only from Efiie, who 
says it in almost every letter from Camiers, 
but from those in authority, that the boys are 
always asking when I am coming back. 

The time-limit is the difficulty — everywhere, 
but more especially in the war zone, the re- 
strictions are growing in intensity, and per- 
mits for foreign service to civilians are now 
almost impossible to obtain. If I agree to 
stay three months, I can go to-morrow, but 
how can I leave home for three months, as 

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long as Himself is still on this side of the 
water, liable to come on leave any day, or even 
just to say good-bye before he sails? 

I can't do it, so I am compromising by 
agreeing to go for a spell to the home camps. 

The Winchester Command has asked me for 
a month and I'll try to put in a part of it soon. 
Effie is due on leave immediately, but she is 
finding conditions changing too at her base. 
What has happened is that all the butterflies 
and the undesirables, out merely for a new 
sensation, have been weeded out and only the 
solid workers remain. 

"The plague of women" that tormented the 
military authorities during the Boer War and 
created endless problems in South Africa has 
been more drastically dealt with in this war. 

I wish I could tell you all the things EfRe 
has told me, but there is a certain reticence to 
be observed, and amid so much that is fine and 
noble why insist or dwell upon the flaws? 

You asked about Florence in your last letter 
and I gave her your message. Daily I thank 
God for my faithful servant and friend who 
cares for me so tenderly, and is so understand- 
ing of all the trials of this changed, unnatu- 

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ral life. She is part of the House of Defence 
— the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. 
She has three brothers in the war. One who 
had been frightfully wounded about the head 
and face came back convalescent the other day 
and I saw him here. I was afraid to go into 
the kitchen, knowing what the nature of his 
wounds had been, but so cleverly, w^onderfully, 
had he been handled by these heaven-born sur- 
geons who repair the waste and WTCckage of 
war that he looked much as of yore, though 
with some deep scars w^here part of a new jaw 
had been grafted on. He was very quiet, as 
those are who have been long in the midst of 
unspeakable things, but when I asked him 
whether he was willing to go back, he just 
smiled. 

"There is nothing else to be done," he an- 
swered. "And there's the regiment and the 
pals." That is the spirit of Kitchener's Army 
— the spirit that lives after him, and which 
will bring the victory. It makes one proud 
to be alive and to belong to the old flag. 

Picture me then, Cornelia, carrying on as 
bravely and steadily as may be, a little rocky 
and homesick at times, but yet following, if 

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afar off, in the track the boys have outlined 
and worn by the tramp of their brave unflinch- 
ing feet. To be worthy, not only of those who 
have died to keep us safe and free, but of those 
who have been maimed and wrecked for us in 
the summer of their days, and have still to live 
with their cross upon them — that is the charge 
laid upon the rest of us, by the God who is 
watching the conflict from His secret place, 
biding His hour to strike. 



[94] 



IX 



The grip of war is tightening in on our 
little Island, Cornelia. Soon it will be relent- 
less. 

As I was standing this morning with Flor- 
ence in our sadly diminished and attenuated 
store cupboard she said in her simple direct 
way, **Do you notice that every day there is 
a little less, something else we have to do with- 
out?" It was apropos of the plum puddings 
and the mincemeat, now due to be made, but 
for which there are no ingredients. A good 
many households in England and Scotland de- 
pended upon our Christmas puddings. I hate 
to have them go short, but diplomatic relations 
being what they are with Tino of Greece, we 
have no currants. It is thus we visualise and 
realise the intimate discomfort of a world at 
war. It has all to be cheerfully faced, how- 
ever, and we talked substitutes for a good half 
hour, and there will be a pudding of some sort 
to go forth to the waiting households, though 
it will be minus the plums. 

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Since I wrote you last I have been to Scot- 
land. 

War has shaken the foundations of our 
Kingdom by the Sea. It has ceased to be a 
haven and become in very truth a coast de- 
fense. The cliffs bristle with guns, they have 
crept up from the fort, till the nearest one is 
over the garden wall not fifty yards away. 
There it stands with its gleaming nozzle to 
the sea, the gunners unsleeping night and day 
by its side. 

It has become horrible and menacing. Its 
old-world intimate charm, which belongs to 
simple places untouched by conventionality, 
has surely gone, forever sacrificed, as so much 
else has been, to the monster that has convulsed 
the world. 

When we could not keep the Boy we laid 
him here in the place he so loved — and it was 
a crumb of comfort in our sorrow to feel that if 
he had been given choice he would himself have 
chosen to sleep on the windy hill above the 
shore where in his childhood days he used to 
paddle with his fat brown legs, and his bucket 
gripped hard in his podgy little hands. 

As I sat there by his white cross on the 
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windy hill and listened to the beat of the surf 
on the rocks below, I wondered what he was 
thinking of it all, and I felt glad that his dear 
dust was sleeping sweetly, his soul safe in 
the Father's House. I think I must tell you 
here, my soul's friend, of a strange story I have 
had sent to me from France, a story which 
affects me and mine. The Boy had his father's 
genius for friendship, and clung to his chums 
with all the ardour of his nature. I lost sight 
of his chief one when Oxford swallowed him. 
In a busy life hke mine there is not time to do 
all the things one wants to do. The garden 
of friendship even has to suffer through the 
lack of cultivation. 

This chum was starting what promised to be 
a brilliant professional career when the war 
threw him into the vortex. As a young lieu- 
tenant of the Engineers he crossed to France 
and received his death wounds at La Bassee. 
I was in France at the time and could so easily 
have found him in the hospital among the sand 
dunes near Wimereux, only I did not know. 
I did not even see his name in the Times, You 
know we don't read the lists so carefully now, 
most of us are afraid. After a time I got a 

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letter from his mother telling me how he had 
died. He had lingered three weeks, suffering 
no pain, fully aware that he could not recover, 
ready to die as he had lived, without fear, 
bravely, as brave men only can and do die. 
His mother was with him to the end. I am not 
sure whether I envy her. Mine went in a flash 
without pain or warning, or possible shrinking, 
straight from one home of love to another. It 
must wring a mother's heart to watch the can- 
dle flickering out so slowly. She wanted to 
be with him night and day, but he always urged 
her to leave him at night; both because she 
never slept and he was better alone. She was 
very sad until he said one night, "Do go 
mother, I am never lonely you know, for when 
you go, Ned comes. He is here all the time — 
and I want you to know he's waiting for me 
and I'll be all right over there." All right over 
there! God, how beautiful it is, and how it 
comforted me to feel that my son is no more 
lonely in the Father's House. 

Those things are not figments of the imagi- 
nation, Cornelia — the veil is very thin, and the 
Lord Christ Himself walks with these dear 
lads and shows them the way home. 

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f . ! 

I am glad they are both out of it now — safe 
fojrevermore. 

My sister, Janet, whom you never met, and 
who has so long cared for our summer home, 
is no longer able. She has never really recov- 
ered the shock of the Boy's passing — and 
though she stoutly denies it, the strain of the 
war had told on her very much. She must have 
a rest and get away for a while from the guns 
of the coast defence. So we have let the house. 
Conceive it, Cornelia, if you can — strangers 
living and sleeping and possessing our King- 
dom by the Sea! 

The house the children loved best of all the 
houses in the world is now in military posses- 
sion! How truly Florence touched the spring 
when she said, "Every day there is something 
to be given up." 

If it means helping to win the war, if it can 
be won no other way than by giving up all we 
are and have, why then let us in the name of 
God do it gladly, with high heads and shining 
eyes in which there are no tears. 

It is liberty and love we fight for. If they 
are slain, what will be left? 

My sister has come here to be with me for 
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r . ' ! 

some months. I am disquieted about her. She 
looks frail, and she has lost the old buoyancy 
and wit. Now that she can rest for the first 
time in her life, the desire to rest has passed. 
It is all so pathetic and so typical of the stern 
discipline we call life. We really are in the 
fighting line from the cradle to the grave. I 
smiled this morning looking back to when I 
said it was necessary to take her out of the 
strain of the Coast Defence. Because she has 
come into the real war zone here, and last 
night got a taste of invasion from the air. I 
must tell you about it because, though we have 
had many attacks from the air during the last 
year, this one stands out. We brought one 
of the raiders down — a mass of flaming wreck- 
age — an awful but a glorious sight. 

I have sometimes wished I could have you 
come here to share one of our Zeppelin nights, 
to feel the thrill of tense fear which seizes the 
bravest when the warning sounds, to run with 
us to shelter, and live the long hours of strain 
and terror through. 

I forget whether I told you that we have 
very good cellarage in our Chinese Chippen- 
dale house and that we accommodate about 20 
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or 30 less fortunate neighbours while the dan- 
ger is most imminent. Florence takes special 
pride in the cellar ; she keeps it very clean and 
snug, spreads old rugs and sets out the garden 
chairs. Then there is an oil stove and various 
wraps for the cold nights. It can be very cold 
in a cellar about 3 A. M. when one's vital- 
ity is at its lowest ebb, and fear lurks in every 
corner. 

Some of the women bring their knitting and 
the mechanical exercise helps to allay nervous 
distress. A woman I met one morning after 
a raid said she had been out buying dusters for 
her Zeppelin guests to hem in their forced se- 
clusion. Of course it is the gregarious instinct 
which brings them together ; danger seems less 
awful somehow when it is shared. 

I don't know whether they notice how short 
a time I spend under ground — I never sit down 
there. I want to be up and out if possible, 
facing the danger, of which I am yet mortally 
afraid. I don't fancy death in a cellar and I 
fear I am like the tommies, a fatalist as re- 
gards bullets and bombs. 

But I'm digressing shamefully. The warn- 
ing came about seven, and just before nine, 
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I. . , n^ 

we heard the grating of the engines up aloft. 
It was so loud we thought there must be two 
or three, but we could not see anything. They 
went straight over London, approaching as 
usual from the North, and just missing us. 
They dropped a good many bombs, and the 
air was full of the noise of bursting shells, and 
the clatter of our anti-aircraft guns. Shrapnel 
was flying from them, even over our little town, 
and safety was only to be found indoors. 

About midnight the marauders began to 
retrace their steps, if I may put it so, and 
came right overhead. 

Then we beheld a wonderful and glorious 
sight. Our intrepid airmen, just like great 
gadflies winging through the night, were 
searching the sky for the enemy and presently 
one got above the stationary Zeppelin and 
found the range. It looked as if they were 
directly above the church opposite to us, but 
the actual conflict took place in the air about 
8 miles away. 

When he got the range he showed a green 

light, a signal to the anti-aircraft guns below 

to cease firing. We could not hear the shot 

that made an end of the monster, but presently 

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we saw vivid streaks like forked lightning run 
along the side of the giant airship. The next 
moment, a mass of white flame, it toppled over 
and began slowly to descend. The cage be- 
came detached first and those who were near 
enough saw the body of its unfortunate occu- 
pant fall from it. It descended in a field be- 
hind the doctor's house at Potter's Bar, and 
such a cheer rent the air, ringing hoarse from 
a million throats, from London to the sea, that 
one felt positively thrilled, and forgot the night 
of fear. Some wept and some sang "God Save 
the King." The great solid satisfying fact 
that the death-dealing monster had been ut- 
terly destroyed sent us thankful to our beds. 
These awful happenings have their comic as 
well as their tragic side, and even with nerves 
stnmg to the highest pitch we are able to 
laugh. 

We had the Holbrooks for the week end — 
the whole four of them. He is a typical John 
Bull, and he was much annoyed because a very 
keen game of bridge was interrupted. He re- 
sented the interference with his liberty and 
personal convenience. Nothing on earth 
would take him to the cellar, he sunply planted 
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himself with a very long pipe and a whiskey 
and soda in the library, where he sat with a 
suffering air, what we call the "O Lord, how 
long?" expression on his face. His women 
folk, thrilled and interested, for though they 
live in London their area has so far escaped 
intimate acquaintance with Zeppelins, could 
not be brought in from the street. 

Mrs. Holbrook is just as amusing in her 
way as her spouse. Born in England of Ger- 
man parents, she is loyal to the core, and re- 
joices that she has never even seen Germany. 
She loathes the war and all it stands for, and 
she will never give her son until she is obliged 
to; she is the living personification of the line, 
"I didn't raise my boy to be a soldier." She 
can't understand, though she is a dear soul, the 
thrill and the pride with which we can give 
and give and give, not money, but our heart's 
blood till there is nothing left. 

It is the waste of war which terrifies her. 
You see, she has no hope or belief in anything 
beyond this life. She just shakes her head if 
you speak to her of the souls that are marching 
on. "I hope you're right," she says, "but I 
don't believe it myself, when I am dead there 
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[ 

will be an end of me; that's as far as I've got." 

How awful to have to live up against such 
a blank wall — no wonder she clings to the ma- 
terial body of her son with frantic hands that 
will never let him go. 

We got through the night at last, snatched 
an hour or two's sleep, and in the morning went 
over to Potter's Bar in the motor to see all that 
was left of the monster of the air. 

The pretty little village swarmed with peo- 
ple ''out for to see" just as our town swarmed 
with them when we got our share of attention 
from Count Zeppelin. 

We tramped through indescribable mud to 
the sweet meadow where the wreckage lay; 
partly caught in the branches of a giant oak 
tree — then trailing away across the sward like 
the tail of some enormous rattlesnake. We 
did not see the engines — they had been re- 
moved in the small hours on a military truck. 
What we did see was the retrieval of the 
bodies from the wreckage — poor charred 
objects — perfectly unrecognisable. Mothers' 
sons every one, and somewhere in Germany 
their homes will be desolate because they do not 
return. I thought of that, but the temper of 
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I ! 

the crowd was hostile and bitter, and the feel- 
ing uppermost was grim satisfaction that they 
had met a righteous and deserved doom. 

More of the dark fruits of war, the temper- 
ing and hardening of a naturally kindly peo- 
ple into a thirst for revenge. 

God send it may end soon — before we are 
all so changed that we shall bear no semblance 
to our former selves. 



[106]i 



X 



I SEEM to have reached the end of my let- 
ter just about the time I wrote to you last and 
the doctor, whom in the absence of Himself, 
I had to call in, ordered me to go away and 
take a complete rest — you loiow the formula 
— but dear God, how can we rest in a world 
where there is no rest, and with the thunder 
of the guns in our ears night and day. It is 
the Somme fighting now, in which we have lost 
so many of those we love. 

I think I gave up the day I got a telegram 
telling me Dick had been killed at Trones 
Wood. You remember Dick, and Isabel, that 
lovely pair for whom I wrote the little book, 
'betters to a War Bride." 

I don't quite know how to tell you what he 
was like — a most gallant gentle Knight with- 
out fear and without reproach — yet so full of 
fun, that somehow laughter sang in the heart 
wherever he came — the laughter that doeth 
good like a medicine. The last time I saw 
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f ... . . ? 

him, Isabel had come down from Palace Gate 
to spend a few days and Dick came marching 
through with his Fusiliers, en route from Col- 
chester to France. He and his Major dined 
with us — and I never saw him again — nor ever 
will see him now, till we meet on the other side. 

No doubt we are naturally drawn towards 
those whom nature has richly endowed. He 
was as handsome as a dream — tall, dark with 
flashing tender eyes and a smile that was never 
far away from his lips. A man of peace if 
ever there was one, yet he was dedicated to 
war, in order that peace may be established 
for all time as "one of those things that can- 
not be shaken." 

They were a beautiful pair; she with her 
slender, delicate charm, her braids of red gold 
hair, her pathetic eyes. I have never seen 
such love. It often made me afraid. And 
now he sleeps there on the Somme where we 
have already left ninety thousand like him. 
Great God, and yet there are those who ask 
when Britain is going to come into the war and 
why she doesn't bear her share! 

I felt I had to go to her, but she was far 
away at her father's place in Scotland and I 
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was not able to go. My marching orders were 
drastic. Himself ordered me to Harrogate, 
where he said he would come the moment he 
could get forty-eight hours' leave. 

So I got me ready, and Janet went part of 
the way, branching off at York, for Hull. I 
arrived at Harrogate like a person in a dream, 
seeking a cure. A cure from what? Inside my 
heart were wounds for which there never could 
be any cure this side the grave. I found I 
was nearer the breaking point than I knew, 
for when I got to bed there I found I was not 
able to get up again. The heart had gone 
clean out of me. I remember Himself arriv- 
ing from out of some void at six o'clock in the 
morning, and his face as he stood over me ask- 
ing me questions, taking temperatures and do- 
ing all the things the Doctor has to do when 
he is up against his job. 

Then there were consultations and tele- 
phones and people coming in and out of the 
room. Strange men asking questions and 
looking at me, and at one another, with grave 
faces. I seemed so out of it all, and when I 
heard them say outside of the door, ** We'd bet- 
ter tell her," something flashed through me 
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with a thrill of unexplicable, inconceivable 
joy. I had come to the end, the door was ajar, 
and I should get away clean and forever from 
the fever and the fret — the holding up when 
you feel yourself wilting, the carrying on when 
there is nothing to carry on with. 

Tired? There is no word that can begin to 
describe how tired I was. Then they came in 
and told me I should have to have an operation 
immediately — within an hour or two. I just 
smiled and said, "Very well." 

The next thing I was being carried down 
the hotel stairs on a stretcher to the ambulance, 
where they laid me down rolled in a blanket — 
a nurse was at the head and Himself sitting 
like a grim sentinel at the foot — ^we never 
si3oke to one another, not a single word. You 
have never seen him look like that, Cornelia 
— you have only heard his laugh, and seen his 
dancing eyes, while he tried to tease you and 
to imitate what he called the Yankee twang. 

As for me my eyes were fixed on the tender 

blue of the sky — flecked with those wonderful 

delicious little fleecy clouds like foam flakes on 

an azure sea, and all the time I wondered 

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whether soon I would be up and away beyond 
them. 

It was to a private hospital they took me 
and I had to lie in a weird kind of bed there till 
the hour came. I had no fear or apprehension 
— I had just given up. Himself and I did not 
talk. When you have been so long together 
surely everything has been said. But I saw 
his face hard and set and sharp in the clear 
light, and understood that the bond had stood 
the test. 

The operation was successful, but when I 
awoke and found I was still in the land of the 
living, I wept with sheer disappointment. I 
had relaxed my hold, given up, wanted to be 
free. But apparently there is work still to 
be done, but where, oh where, am I to find 
strength to do it? 

Convalescence in pleasant surroundings is 
a kind of lotus land and I have a sympathy I 
had never felt before for the women who ac- 
quire what Himself calls the "nursing Home 
habit." The utter lack of responsibility, sub- 
mission to the will of others ; complete surren- 
der of one's entity has its private and particu- 
lar lure for the human soul. To eat and 

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' """ ' "^ 

sleep and get well is a simple creed enough, 
but it is apt to have a corroding effect. Some- 
times I had the awful feeling that I should 
never be able to go back to the real world and 
begin the fight all over again. I read much 
and was able to give my full attention to "Mr. 
Eritling Sees It Through." 

It impressed me so much that I wrote a long 
letter to H. G. and had a very characteristic 
reply. He is taking himself as seriously as 
ever, and all the world is called to witness the 
evolution of his soul. I have been watching 
it for quite a long time. To us who are vet- 
erans on the road it seems all a little crude and 
pathetic. 

Nevertheless it is one of the finest books of 
the war that has been written. I expect you 
have already read it — tell me how it strikes 
you? 

Himself, restored to his normal courage and 
cheerfulness, came and took me home. His 
commanding officer has been very decent to 
him through it all, and has not grudged nor 
forbidden the necessary leave. I was about a 
week alone before Effie came and she is going 
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to stay this time till I am quite well. We have 
all sorts of plans. It all ended in our going 
to Bournemouth to get out of the air raid zone 
and enjoy the sunshine of the south coast. 

The place was very full and though it was 
quite safe from the air alarms — everywhere we 
met wounded and broken men, blinded men, 
and those wearing on their faces the look of 
those who have seen and known. And it was 
there at Bournemouth that we got the glad, 
the glorious news that you had come in. We 
did not know how^ badly we had wanted it, how 
near we were to the breaking point till the 
message which has transformed the whole 
world was flashed across the seas. 

We were at Boscombe and the Nicolls at the 
Bath Hotel at Bournemouth. When we met 
that night I was struck by the expression on 
Sir William's face even more than by anything 
he said. He looked like a man from whom 
the cloud had been lifted and who could once 
more breathe freely. He knows all there is 
to know about the war and when I saw the ef- 
fect the momentous decision had upon him, I 
seemed to realise how much had depended on 
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I, 



it. All he said was "Thank God, America has 
come in!" 

• •••••• 

I wanted to send a cable to George and the 
only thing I could think of was *'Hail Colum- 
bia!" EfRe remarked, "It will be nice and 
cheap." 

This has narrowed the dividing seas and I 
am seeing you and George and all the other 
Georges and Cornelias who care, holding a 
jubilee. Nothing seems to matter now — ^how- 
ever long the war lasts, we can see it out. 
Though the way may be uphill to the very end, 
we can climb it to the victory peaks — compan- 
ioned by your strength and sympathy and sub- 
stantial help. 

I am so glad about it I can't sleep. Effie 
has just made a little sketch of Uncle George 
receiving the news ; it is a disrespectful sketch, 
but I'm putting it in. 

All that matters now is that we belong to 
one another and to posterity forever and ever. 



[114] 



XI 



I GOT your delightful letter yesterday. It 
came at the psychological moment when I was 
right down in the depths. It was a friendly 
true hand stretched across the dark void. 

It has happened, Cornelia; Himself has 
gone beyond my ken in the troop train and 
the troop ship, across the seas. It came, as all 
the marching orders do, without warning or 
preparation. He was simply told to be ready 
for embarkation in forty-eight hours — destina- 
tion Egypt — not France or Flanders, but 
away to the Orient, from whence come no leave 
trains. How often have I stood on the plat- 
form at Victoria or Charing Cross to bid some 
comrade good-bye; and been thrilled by the 
poignant tenseness of the hour, the glory and 
the humour and the pathos of it. Saying 
good-bye to a pal, however good he may be, 
is not the same as saying good-bye to your 
very own, every hair of whose head is dear. 
There was no glory nor humour for me that 
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day at Waterloo, though Ronald Robertson of 
the gallant Gordons did his best to provide 
both, with his crutches and his merry smile. 

I told you how he had lost his leg at Loos; 
a boy to whom legs meant so much. All he 
says is that he would give the other one, too, 
if it would do them any good. How are you 
to eve7i iliinh of your own sorrow in the face 
of a devotion so invincible, so divine? 

We were a little company of close friends 
to see Himself go off; no woman dare go 
through that ordeal quite alone. It was an 
officers' train, some of them so very, very 
young, and so pathetically proud to be really 
going at last in all the panoply of war, with 
the addition of brand new pith helmets 
which extinguished their features when they 
put them on, and made them look like over- 
grown mushrooms. 

There was the uisual hustle and delay, but 
at last the signal blew and the snorting engine 
dragged them away to the tunnel which swal- 
lowed the hearts of half the women left behind. 
It was an awful moment, just black darkness 
that could be felt. There is something wrong, 
Cornelia, something terribly wrong with a 
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world in which such things are possible. Peo- 
ple can't have been meant to suffer so much, 
yet somehow I feel that we have not come to 
the end of the pain yet. It is Calvary we are 
coming to, and this is only getting us ready. 

Himself said very little. He just looked 
wrung and asked some one in a very quick, 
hoarse voice to take care of me. 

So he is away out into the void, the biggest 
void of all, and I am left to fill up and carry on 
as best I can. 

Your dear letter has turned my thoughts 
into an entirely new direction. George's sum- 
ming up of your feverish war activities in 
America as "getting restless in your sleep" is 
really fine. Tell him with my love that I did 
not think he could have evolved it from his gay 
inner consciousness. What I am absolutely 
sure about, is that there is nothing feverish or 
casual about Ms war activities. I shall ex- 
pect to receive a photograph of him in uni- 
form. Age? What is Age? It doesn't 
count in this war. The uniform took ten years 
off Himself 's age and he will see that they are 
kept off. 

I know a man, one of our County magnates, 
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/ ! 

who has given four sons to the war. Two have 
been killed, one still fights and the last has been 
invalided out and given a military post at 
home. 

The old man, seventy, if he is a day, has got 
himself taken on somehow, and in ranker's uni- 
form acts as his Colonel Son's orderly and is 
very particular about the salutes! 

Love of country is ageless, thank God; 
Himself thinks before we are through every 
veteran will have to take his stand. 

Don't get worried, because you seem to be 
going slow. Of course, what you tell me in 
confidence is a little disappointing. We did 
think you were quietly getting ready before 
the clarion call was sounded. 

Well, never mind, you will soon get a move 
on. You are such a tremendous big brother. 
When you really get into fighting trim the 
earth, to say nothing of the Kaiser, must trem- 
ble. 

Tell George to write to me without fail 
whenever he gets back from Washington. 

I should love to come out to you now, but 
there is so much to do here and so few to do it. 

I am now strong enough to get into harness 
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again and have been doing quite a lot of talk- 
ing at the camps and ammunition works. 

The other night, I had rather a curious ex- 
perience. They asked me if I would go down 
to a big shell factory, almost entirely manned 
by women, and speak to the squad on the night 
shift. I ought to explain a little about the 
women working in Munitions. 

They are not ordinary factory hands nor 
even all working girls. 

When the urgent call went out that thou- 
sands of women were needed to make the im- 
plements of war and stand as a rampart be- 
hind the fighting men, the response came from 
all classes. 

I know hundreds of women who formerly 
only knew work as something they paid other 
people to do, who are now cheerfully standing 
on their feet twelve hours a day with intervals 
for meals; living side by side in horrid little 
communal villages with girls from the East 
End and the slums, and who give all they earn 
to the war funds. 

Further, they are happier than they have 
ever been in their lives. They have found the 
key to one of the finest paradises available to 
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I ;:^ 

humanity, and are proving work to be a pana- 
cea for almost every sorrow. I don't think 
they are going to lose that key any more. 

But though it is all very fine, the first time 
I was in real big munition works and saw these 
heads — some of them such pretty heads — bent 
over the machines, I rebelled, just as I some- 
times rebel over Effie's youth being spent in 
the drudgery of the French war zone. 

For we are only young once, and for youth 
there is no substitute. You have to grip your- 
self hard sometimes when you are overwhelmed 
by the sight of womanhood dedicated to the 
work of destruction and ask what it all means. 
God made us creators, builders, conservers, 
and the waste and cruelty of war is opposed to 
the very basic principles of our being. Then 
why? 

Just because there is one thing worse than 
war, a dishonourable peace based on selfish- 
ness, and love of ease, and shirking of responsi- 
bihty. 

I had the same feeling always when I had 

to stand up in the huts in France before the 

units of the First Hundred Thousand and it 

was only by gripping myself tight and hold- 

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ing on to the great ideals they stood for, that I 
had the courage to say anything to them at 
all. 

The spirit is fine among the women muni- 
tioners but sometimes they get tired and dis- 
couraged and long for the old sweet peace of 
home, and the cheerful comradeship of the fire- 
side. It is then that the welfare superinten- 
dent s, watching with unsleeping vigilance, call 
to the helpers outside to come and do their bit. 
I was to speak to them at the lunch hour, half 
past two in the morning, just to remind them 
that they are in the trenches too and that they 
must stand solid and unflinching behind the 
men who are laying down their lives for us. 

I was walking to and fro on the great floor 
of the factory and had just paused to ask a 
rather white, sad- faced girl what was worrying 
her, when suddenly the lights went out. We 
knew what that meant, all of us, and it really 
was one of the most awful moments I have 
ever experienced. As we listened through a 
silence that could be felt, the machinery hav- 
ing stopped as if by magic, we could hear the 
sinister grinding of the Zeppelin engine over- 
head. We all knew that if a bomb crashed 
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i ■ 

through the frail roof very few of the four 
thousand would see another dawn. 

Presently nerves began to break a little; a 
sob sounded here and there, and once there 
was a little scream. Then some angel in a far 
corner, guided from above, no doubt, began to 
sing low and softly, "Jesus lover of my soul." 

I have heard many lovely heart-breaking 
things, Cornelia, but never anything that 
thrilled like that. It reminded me a little of 
your Jubilee singers who came over with 
Moody, the Evangelist, so long ago from your 
country. When they sang "Steal away to 
Jesus," it had the same grip and thrill as it 
came stealing across the vast arena, taken up 
by almost every voice. The effect was instan- 
taneous ; it fell like Balm of Gilead on our ter- 
rified hearts. 

We suddenly felt that God was over all, and 
that unless He permitted, nothing could hap- 
pen. Nothing did happen. After a time the 
menace passed, lights went up again and work 
was quite quickly and cheerfully resumed. We 
did not speak about it at all afterwards. It is 
just part of the day's work. 

I saw something quite as fine when I went 
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to Gretna for a five-day visit to the workers 
there. You know Gretna Green? Every 
good American does. It is one of the shrines 
at which you worship. The sweet old world 
village has been swept away, or rather become 
quite unrecognisable. A great new city like 
those to which you are so accustomed ''out 
West" has sprung up. When I saw all the 
signs and symbols of organised industry on a 
gigantic scale, I looked away across the shift- 
ing Solway sands and wondered whether the 
ghost of Ravenswood, riding to his doom, ever 
comes back to marvel at the thing that has 
happened. 

Great crowds of women and girls are em- 
ployed there and the welfare superintendents 
have their hands full. The problems and 
grave menace to youth segregated in such 
numbers far away from home influences are 
big enough to keep some of us awake at nights. 
We are fully alive to them and taclde them 
with all the wisdom and foresight we can mus- 
ter for the gigantic task. 

The spirit is fine — patriotism is a holy fire 
indeed which can purge the human heart clean 
of the dross itself. 

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I spoke a big incontrovertible truth in an- 
swer to a woman who was condohng rather pro- 
fusely on the loss of our dear home. "You can 
get another house, but there is only one coun- 
try." 

There are several rows of danger shops at 
Gretna, where the most inflammable of all the 
high explosives is handled. 

To minimise the loss in case of accident 
these shops have been made to accommodate 
only ten or twelve workers. There was an ex- 
plosion when I was there, and some of the 
workers were killed. The girls behaved with 
such quiet courage and endurance that one 
can hardly speak about it without tears. 

And every one of them insisted on being sent 
at once into another shop to take the same 
risks all over again. The true war spirit 
which danger and death only deepens and in- 
tensifies. 

But oh, Cornelia, more and more I feel that 
it is all wrong. 

If only all this splendid force could be ded- 
icated to construction, instead of to destruc- 
tion, why then our social vices and problems 
would melt like mist before the morning sun. 
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But perhaps my vision is limited, so that I do 
not see far enough. Perhaps we are building 
better than we know in the midst of this 
mighty debacle. 

Perhaps, who knows, — the work of national 
reconstruction through the discipline, the sor- 
row and the pain of its individual units has 
already begun. 



[125] 



XII 

Your last letter gave me so much to think 
about, that I have had to put off answering it 
day after day. Have you observed that those 
who wait for the convenient season, never, 
somehow come up with it? The time to an- 
swer letters is when you get them, though 
there may be some danger lurking in that ad- 
mirable habit. 

For instance, if you get one which causes 
your dander to be *'riz," it is better to wait for 
the cooling process. Disasters have been 
averted, especially in business, by the couuK^el 
of patience. How often have I had to get sur- 
reptitious hold of letters written by Himself 
and keep them over till he said, *'I wish I 
hadn't sent that. Why did you let me?" 
Then I produce it and all is well. But some- 
times I have been too late, or he wouldn't let 
me intervene. 

Then sometimes it was the right thing for 
the bomb to be thrown. 

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Peace at any price is not the best always; 
it can be the very worst. And now he is away 
where there are no letters to answer, not even 
mine. I haven't had a message of any kind 
for six weeks — I don't even know where he is. 

We live through these things. Thousands 
of women are eating their hearts out all over 
the world, just as I am. It is the price of war. 

What you tell me about your Anne fills me, 
not with your disquiet, but with an understand- 
ing sympathy. You are feeling a little as I 
felt when I realised that for a time I had lost 
the Boy. The period extended over quite a 
few years from the second year of his school 
life. The first year he was nothing but a 
homesick little chap, needing his mother 
dreadfully. Then he began to stiffen up, his 
father standing like a comrade by his side. 

I never got him back, Cornelia, not as I had 
him once. He went out very soon into the 
world of men, and the things he met there I 
could not share. No woman can. When a 
man fails his young son during those moulding 
years of destiny, there is no retrieval. It is 
the greatest failure in history or in life. 

Mine did not fail his son, and I stood by a 
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little wistfully sometimes, bolstering my heart 
with a vision of the days to be, when the grown 
man, a child at heart, would creep back to his 
mother's arms. 

But the day never came. I don't mind now, 
for he belongs to me so utterly. Himself gave 
him up the day we laid him on the windy hill 
above the sea ; a chapter of his life that was the 
most radiant had Finis written across the page. 

But I got my baby back, and can never lose 
him again. 

You must not worry too much about Anne. 
Girls pass through quite as many phases as 
their brothers and some of them are more tire- 
some. The only child is an object for com- 
miseration rather than for envy. Growth can 
be retarded, sometimes even stopped, by over 
cultivation. Anne has had too much waiting 
on, too much anxiety and sheltering care lav- 
ished on her. She is the product of intensive 
culture. 

But her nature is so sweet and wholesome 
that she'll come out on top yet. 

Of course the very best thing that could 
happen to her, would be to marry a compara- 
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33 



tively poor man and have a lot of children, 
certainly not less than six. 

I think I see you gasp, but Cornelia, in 
these words lie hidden one of the first elemen- 
tal truths of existence and of happiness. It 
is what we were made for — to be mothers of 
men, and when for one reason or another we 
miss, or shirk that high destiny, we have got 
to pay the price. What can match the flowers 
of the field for beauty and strength? Their 
sweetness is flung ungrudgingly on a desert 
world; no man prunes, or trains or troubles 
about them; they are the children of mother 
earth and greatly do her credit. We shall 
have to get back to old primeval simple things 
where the big issues are concerned. The fam- 
ily, not the solitary child, but the healthy, 
sturdy row, "steps and stairs," as we used to 
call them, will have to become, as of yore, the 
basic column of our national life. 

The war which has torn at the very roots of 
our vaunted civilisation has revealed to us the 
canker. 

Anne is being as tiresome as a self-willed 
girl of seventeen can be, and that is saying 
much. You see they know everything at that 
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:A.N ENGLISH WOMAN'S HOME 

r ! 

age, and nobody else knows anything. Par- 
ents are back numbers, their only function to 
provide the setting for the soaring ambitions, 
through which seventeen aims at self-realisa- 
tion. 

I don't think there is much you can do at 
this juncture. If she had been but two years 
older, I should have asked you to ship her over 
here and I would have taken her to France. 
I expect to go there next month. If she could 
be beside Effie and do a bit of honest work, the 
more sordid and unattractive work the better, 
she would get something of a perspective. 
When my girl went out first and I was very 
anxious, a wise man and true friend said : 

*'Now you must leave Effie alone. You 
have done all you can. Let Destiny do the 
rest." 

It comforted me mightily and I have hon- 
estly tried to follow his advice. It isn't easy. 
I am one of the candid outspoken kind of peo- 
ple, and I never see any reason for not talking 
about what interests me. 

But Himself and Effie don't talk. Half the 
time you never know what they are thinking or 
meaning to do. I suppose they know them- 
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selves, only they don't feel the need of sharing 
things. Once when particularly exasperated, 
I informed Himself he ought never to have 
been married, as he would have been a success 
as a Swiss Family Robinson, without the fam- 
ily, quartered on a desert island. He just 
smiled and made no comment. 

A friend of mine, married to a very distin- 
guished man, whose name I daren't mention, 
said to me once : "It is quite possible to love 
your husband dearly and yet to want fre- 
quently to throw him out of the window." 

I have just had an interruption from a 
woman who runs one of the camp tents here 
— an awful kind of woman, who never stops 
talking about herself for a moment. When 
she went away she thanked me for our pleasant 
talk. I very nearly said: "Thank yourself, 
JNIa'am — I had no talk." 

It took me back quite a long time to a Bo- 
hemian night in Douglas Sladen's flat, at Ken- 
sington, which was filled to overflowing with a 
motley crew of what are popularly termed 
"leading lights" of the stage, literature, and 
art. The party overflowed itself out to the 
stairs. I was caught in the passage besidef 
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Hall Caine; he did not know me, though 1 
knew him. How he talked! I was gratefuj 
to him, for it made me forget the weariness and 
discomfort of the moment. A day or twc 
later I got a letter from him, written a1 
Greeba Castle, Isle of Man, telling me thai 
the only thing he carried away from that party 
was the memory of our interesting conversa- 
tion. There was no conversation that I could 
recall. What I had carried away was a very 
interesting, one-man talk. It was mostly 
about himself, but one forgets that when it is 
an interesting self. 

To return to Anne, I should not discourage 
that early love affair if I were you. Some 
girls need such for their education. 

From what you tell me about the boy, the 
experience is not likely to seriously endanger 
her future settlement in life. 

Don't worry, because she doesn't talk to you 
about it. You are the very last person in the 
world she will make a confidant of in such an 
affaii\ You are too near of an age, yet nol 
near enough. Besides, you are her mother. 
Don't bully poor George. He can't help it. 
Fathers can't bring up girl-children ; they only 
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make it more difficult for the mother. He 
can't do anything; and that he isn't worrying 
should reassure you, I think. We have to ad- 
mit that a man sees further and gets a grip of 
the whole, while we are handling sections. 
Leave it at that. I mustn't close without ex- 
plaining why I am here in the midst of the 
great camps stretching right through the heart 
of Surrey to the sea. 

Scenes of unimagined beauty have either 
disappeared or become so horribly disfigured 
as to be unrecognisable. As I ride through 
the wind and rain between the long lines of tin 
and wooden huts, see the felled timber, the 
burned heather, all the ugly features of the 
military camp, I chalk up more and more 
against the makers of war. 

I feel sorry for all the people who have built 
lovely homes and lordly dwelling places among 
these matchless hills and downs. They have 
been so good about it, never grumbling or 
standing in the way. 

I am talking every day to the boys. Last 

night I was at Bramshott. But, oh, my dear, 

it is not the same ; the glow and the glory have 

departed. Those who radiated that white heat 

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I m 

of splendour are sleeping in quiet graves in 
France, or Flanders, or on Eastern sands. 

I am not suggesting that the stuff here is 
not as good — in some respects, it might even 
be better. 

But youth has gone — these men*have the 
deep eyes of seeing men, and their mouths are 
grimly set. They are here because they have 
no choice. I think your draft bill is splendid, 
but oh, I hoped great America would come 
in on the volunteer basis. There is something 
different about it, something more finely 
subtle. I am conscious of the mighty differ- 
ence every time I stand up to speak to them. 
They are not less determined that the fight 
shall be to a finish, but they question more. 

They are asking some explanation at the 
hands of those who claim the sacrifice of their 
homes and lives and all men hold dear. Who 
is to answer their righteous questioning? 

Sometimes in my dreams I see a great Judg- 
ment seat where Kings and Emperors, and 
diplomats, and politicians, and wire pullers 
and profiteers will have to answer to the blood 
stained hosts they summoned to fight and die, 
for what? 

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AN ENGLISH WOMAN'S HOME 

I am due back in the French camps in about 
ten days' time and I am half afraid to go. I 
can't answer all the questions they will put to 
me. I don't know enough. 

In the early days you could play upon their 
mobile hearts as on a harp of ten strings; 
tears and laughter and smiles we had then, all 
side by side, with the most glorious courage the 
world has ever seen. 

In some of the battalions now you find the 
fathers of the boys who sleep in Flanders and 
in France. 

Oh, Cornelia, the waste, the wanton waste 
and cruelty of war. Where is it tending? 
Where shall we be brought before it is over? 
Sometimes my brain reels at the thought. 

Meanwhile the band is slowly tightening. 

We have not had any butter at home for 
over a week. 



[135] 



XIII 

The awful suspense about Himself I was 
enduring when I wrote last was broken at last 
by a cable from France. It came from Effie 
at Camiers and it took me some time to 
grasp its meaning. "Safe, unhurt; tell your 
mother," was every word it said. 

Florence and I, poring distractedly over it 
together, could only arrive at the conclusion 
that there had been a disaster at sea, in which 
our troopship was involved. We did not even 
know its name, from what port it had sailed, 
or whither bound; in fact we did not know he 
had sailed at all from the French base. 

It is the black darkness in which one has to 
live which makes it so hard to be a soldier's 
wife in war times. A few more awful days 
had to be lived through — ^whole ten of them, 
then a long, closely written letter from Him- 
self, arrived from a port in France, whose very 
name was not given. 

But the story was wonderfully vivid and 
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full; in fact I didn't know how it had passed 
the Censor, till I saw his own signature on the 
envelope, indicating that he had censored it 
himself. 

I must not enclose the letter, nor yet tell 
you all it contained, because I want you to get 
what I am writing. These are the facts: 

They set sail from Marseilles after long, 
dreary waiting in a particularly unpleasant 
camp, and next morning at ten o'clock were 
torpedoed off the Italian coast, not far from 
Genoa. Do you remember Genoa and its 
terraces where we met first, so long ago that 
it seems as if it must have been in some other 
existence? 

You know how Himself writes, very simply 
and directly, without any embroideries, but 
his narrative was far more impressive than if 
he had tried to make it effective. It simply 
just makes you see it all, realise the horror 
of it. 

The first torpedo disabled the ship, but if 
the enemy had left it at that, she could have 
been taken into port under her own steam. 

There was, of course, a good deal of excite- 
ment and the boats were difficult to handle, 
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apparently they had never been inspected or 
tested for any emergency. Can you conceive 
it, Cornelia, we have been three years at war 
and yet such elementary precautions are left 
to chance? 

Priceless time was lost grappling with them, 
and before they could be lowered, priceless 
lives were lost. Himself waiting calmly, 
ready for the emergency, — or for the end, for 
which he needed no preparation, saw the sec- 
ond shell launched from the submarine. 
Many of the boats had got clear. One had the 
sixty nurses who comprised the hospital unit; 
sitting up to their middles in water, they sang 
hymns to cheer those drifting helpless in the 
sea. 

The second torpedo found its mark amid- 
ships and the gallant boat went down in eight 
minutes. 

The only chance for those still remaining on 
her decks was to jump into the sea. But that 
takes a special kind of courage ; only those who 
had it were saved; the rest went down in the 
awful swirl of the sinking ship. Himself was 
picked up by a Japanese destroyer, filled with 
wonder that he who had done his day's work 
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should have been saved, while so many of his 
boys, with all their lives in front, should have 
gone down. It is a great mystery. 

How often have we asked ourselves that 
kind of question during these dreadful years. 
So many of us would have gone so gladly in 
their place. 

They were landed at the port of Savonna. 
The Italians were extraordinarily kind to 
them, furnishing them with food and wine and 
clothing of every kind. He enclosed some 
snapshots — one actually taken of the sinking 
ship. There will be people, I am sure, ready 
with the camera on the Judgment Day. One 
of these snapshots depicts Himself in his rid- 
ing breeches and leggings and an Italian mil- 
itary cloak, which makes him look like a ban- 
dit. 

He lost everything except that which he hap- 
pened to have on at the moment. All the 
lovely new Eastern kit, to say nothing of his 
photographs, letters, and dear intimate pos- 
sessions, are at the bottom of the sea. 

Nothing matters except that he is safe. He 
has no idea what will happen to him now — he 
supposes they will just have to wait for an- 
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other ship. Meanwhile he is getting a little 
respite from the Spartan rigours of one of the 
worst cantonments he has ever struck, by be- 
ing a voluntary patient in a hospital. 

What he says about that is very amusing. 
He has been accustomed to boss a hospital, 
and now he is being very eflPectively and vig- 
orously bossed. I fear he is not chastened yet, 
but only rebellious. 

I can smile at it all because my heart is 
lightened of its load. God means him to come 
back to me, or he would have gone down in 
the Mediterranean. 

It is odd how in this war, you have convic- 
tions about this one and that; the sort of pre- 
sentiment who will get safely through, and 
who will never come back. But they are not 
always true. I felt so sure about Dick, of 
whom I wi'ote in my last letter. I felt that 
his kind, the very highest type of fearless sol- 
dier and a fine Christian gentleman, was so 
much needed here, that God would care for 
him specially. When one thinks of how many 
like him lie on the blood-soaked fields, one is 
staggered, and uncertain about the future of 
the race. 

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But we must leave it, leave it all and just 
hold blindly on. It has gotten clear beyond 
us. It is so big and awful, we can just not 
grasp it at all. 

I am now a little like a Jack of all trades, 
master of none. Food is beginning to be 
spelled with a very large capital and they tell 
me I must talk about food. I went to Scot- 
land for that purpose and to speak at a great 
meeting in Glasgow Cathedral to commem- 
orate on the 4th of August those who had 
fallen in the war. 

It is the first time a woman has ever lifted 
up her voice in the Cathedral, and the occasion 
caused some searching of heart. The noble 
edifice was absolutely packed and directly I 
got up, standing at a specially selected spot in 
the Nave, I forgot everything but the faces in 
front, the great sorrowing heart of my own 
country and its bitter need. She is a very lit- 
tle country, but none have more nobly done 
their bit. Do you know, Cornelia, that there 
are villages in the north and west of Scotland 
where the young men are all wiped out — 
where there is no link between one generation 
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and another except the babies in arms. There 
are no sons left, no husbands for the girls. It 
was with these things my heart broke as I 
tried to speak. 

Nowhere is there any grudging or holding 
back. At the overflow meeting that had to be 
held in an adjoining church a woman came, up 
at the close, a little plain country woman in 
mourning with a bag on her arm. From it 
she took three photographs of soldiers in High- 
land dress and a war office telegram which 
she laid against one of the lads. "That came 
yesterday," she said. "It's Jamie— he's the 
last " 

All gone and she a widow. What is one to 
say to a woe like that? Where is compensa- 
tion to be found ? There will have to be some- 
thing very satisfying over there beside the 
river of God to make up for the roll of the 
whelming billows here. 

I went on from Glasgow to Dundee to speak 
to two thousand women about the necessity for 
saving food. The situation is becoming acute 
and it has to be explained to the people. I 
have come to the conclusion that food is the 
supreme test. They'll give almost anything 
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AN ENGLISH WOMAN'S HOMIE 

more cheerfully, go into small houses, wear old 
clothes, economise anywhere but on what is 
vulgarly called their "inwards." 

Then you see our industrial population was 
never better off. In the shipbuilding districts, 
the munition areas — the great textile neigh- 
bourhoods, they are simply piling it up. Of 
course they want all the things money can 
buy. I am sure I should, if I had been 
cheated out of them for a whole section of my 
life. 

So you can't blame these people for buying 
salmon at four shillings per pound, the best 
beefsteaks and prime cuts from the joints, 
when they can get them. But the trouble is 
they can't now get them, so there is grumbling 
and unrest. They have got it into their heads 
that the government is hoarding the stuff and 
that favour is being shown. So labour has 
said that it will go short if capital goes short 
with them. 

It is a perfectly reasonable proposition and 
the sooner the card ration scheme comes into 
operation, the better. It will not solve the 
whole problem, of course, nor yet increase in- 
credulously or automatically the available 
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stores. What it will do is to ensure equal dis- 
tribution. 

I, for one, hope Lord Rhondda won't lose 
any more time. I am afraid my letters are 
getting less and less interesting. 

What you asked for was a plain, unvar- 
nished record of war conditions here, which you 
want to keep, and I am setting them down as 
simply and faithfully as I know how. We are 
getting bit by bit down to the sordid bedrock 
where we are face to face with the hideous 
nakedness of war. There are things that the 
glow and glory of our Pentecostal sacrifice can 
hardly illumine. 

In my deep heart I feel that we are coming 
to them soon, and that we shall need more dif- 
ferent kinds of courage than at any time dur- 
ing those searching, aging, interminable years. 

I got back to find that the war office has 
commandeered our ''substitute" for active 
service. There is no one else to be got, so the 
door will have to be shut. It means that our 
living is all gone except what Cook calls "the 
Capting's pay." Cook himself is working at 
munitions now after having successfully 
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planted the potato patch. So there is only- 
Florence and me left, and we don't eat much. 

Life truly is shorn for me of much of its dig- 
nity, and the amazing thing is that one doesn't 
mind — ^we are not our own any more, but 
bought with a price. 

A woman condoled with me not long ago 
over the house being destroyed. All I could 
think of was to say as cheerfully as possible, 
"You can get another house, but there is only 
one country." I must just keep on saying it 
to myself over and over, but sometimes when 
there is nobody looking, I am afraid I don't 
hold my diminished head so high. 



[145] 



XIV 

Food is the question of the hour. The peo- 
ple who have read with uncomprehending eyes 
the imploring official appeals "Eat less bread," 
"Save the Wheat," "Food will win the War," 
are now face to face with real shortage. The 
psychology of this war, in so far as it operates 
in human consciousness, is a very remarkable 
thing. I had to sit down to think it over this 
morning after a very exhausting argument 
with a food waster and hoarder. These two 
words don't sort together, do they, but they 
are apt to the hour. He or she who hoards 
food at this moment of national stress, wastes 
it, because he is preserving it for his own 
wretched body, which is of no value to his coun- 
try. A few minutes' silent contemplation 
brought me into a clearer light. The abso- 
lute refusal of those people to admit the need 
for conservation and self-denial, is a form of 
national pride. They simply can't admit the 
humiliating fact that Great Britain, proud 
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mistress of the seas, is no longer self-support- 
ing or sufficient to her own needs. They 
never knew, of course, that in our most pros- 
perous years we could produce only forty per 
cent, of what we consumed. And if they had 
known it, would it have made any difference? 
It is all so very English, so dogged, so un- 
changed and unchangeable. 

But even this partially comforting reflection, 
that the grumblers and obstructionists are 
really patriots in disguise doesn't ease the situ- 
ation or fill the empty store cupboards. 

And I am in it now, Cornelia, up to the neck 
in it. Having filled many roles, I have now 
become a food expert, from whose lips calories 
and proteids and other heathen words ought to 
flow glibly. Only they don't. I am a plain 
woman and most people are plain in the same 
sense. They hate camouflage; it worries and 
wearies them. I am trying to tell as simply 
as I can, how they may make up with other 
things, for the things that are not there. 

It dpes not read very clearly or convinc- 
ingly, does it? But that is my job. 

It is not easy. Food is not an inspiring 
theme. You cannot wax eloquent over it ; the 
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only dramatic moments are those when you 
flame red with indignation over the breaking 
down of the voluntary system. It has failed 
all along the line, and card rationing is bound 
to come. There have been several distressing 
instances from sources where we had every 
reason to look for better things — ay, even for 
leadership in high ethics. But alas ! the temp- 
tation to be secure against more troublous 
times was too great for resistance. All this 
causes a searching of heart lest there should be 
very weak points left in my armour. I am 
determined that in this particular respect I 
shall do rather more than my share. I am 
kept up to high-water-mark by Florence. 
She really ought to have a medal for allegi- 
ance to the Government under the most try- 
ing conditions. She has weighed everything, 
done all the things I might not have done, 
stood firm between me and every tempta- 
tion. 

If food doesn't actually win the war, at least 
its shortage is searching the hearts and trying 
the reins of the children of men. 

All the time wrestling with those sordid 
details, trying to interest people in oatmeal 
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and bones, and the superiority of casserole 
cooking over the waste of roast and frying, 
I have to keep thinking of the glory and 
travail which is bound up in it all. If you 
haven't something to illumine with, if only a 
farthing dip, you just can't go on. 

Although some people have complimented 
me on my housekeeping, a lot of it doesn't 
really interest me much. It is no credit to me 
that I happened to be born determined to do 
my job well. Even in the gi^eat old dinner- 
giving days, long before the deluge, when we 
vied with one another in frantic endeavours to 
discover something entirely new, with which 
to decorate our menu cards, and fill other 
women with hopeless envy, the game never 
seemed worth the candle. After all, it takes 
very little to keep us alive. 

The things that interested me most in those 
great dinner contests was the eager look in the 
eyes of the women as they sampled the un- 
known and sometimes fearsome looking dish. 

The men usually showed their discrimina- 
tion by leaving the entrees severely alone. 

Where in Heaven's name am I wandering 
to? We housekeepers have at last got some- 
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thing really testing to whet our axes upon. 
We have got to invent and concoct appetising 
dishes minus most of the ingredients we once 
thought necessary to them. 

This is going to be the testing fight. I am 
learning great new lessons every day. I only 
wish I could pass them on. A woman came 
up to me in the street the other day and said: 
"Please, I've tried to do what you said wi them 
substitoots (oh, the scorn in her voice!). But 
'Arry, 'e won't look at 'em. Calls 'em messes, 
'e does; wants 'is 'onest beefsteak, 'e does, an' 
I don't blime 'im, either." 

Neither do I, nevertheless it will be my 
mournful duty to try and impress on him and 
all the other Harrys who are making the lives 
of their helpmeets a burden over this food con- 
servation business, that the true patriot is the 
man who eats his imitation steak with a smile, 
assuring the woman who has laboured over its 
preparation that it is quite equal to the real 
thing. 

Nobody would be deceived, but life would 
be easier. 

I never before realised that bread is really 
the staple food of our working folks. It is 
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rather humiliating to discover how scanty are 
the reserves we are now able to call up. When 
you speak to the average cottage woman about 
soup and explain how nourishing it is for the 
children and how cheaply it can be prepared 
out of bones, if only the necessary care is be- 
stowed on it, she has a way of putting her 
hands on her hips and looking you very 
haughtily in the face with the air of a person 
receiving a personal insult. "Feed me chill en 
on bones! Good Lord! 'as it come to that? 
Not me, thank you, ma'am. I'll get me bit 
o' meat and bread and butter as long as I can 
get 'em and wen they ain't to be got, will do 
without." 

How are you to combat that sort of argu- 
ment which is everywhere, like sorrow — "not 
in single spies, but in battalions" ! 

I shall have to think hard. These people 
have got to be educated. The whole process 
of teaching them the alphabet has to be en- 
tered on now, when we are in the thick of the 
testing fight. 

Oh, it is so very, very English, so tremen- 
dously, unutterably stupid, and maddening ! I 
shall have to stop off or I shall be writing down 
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things that the admirable George, with his ex- 
clusive command of strong language, will not 
permit you to read. 

As usual, when one arrives at the end of 
one's tether, something happens, and there, 
right in front at the end of what looked like a 
blind alley, stood the open door. 

The Administration, having fully tested the 
value of the Communal Kitchen, has sent out 
advices to the country to establish them wher- 
ever possible. As Chairman of our Kitchen 
Committee, I went to London with another 
member — a delightful, practical, breezy per- 
son, to inspect the working of the big experi- 
mental Kitchen on Westminster Bridge Road. 
It was thoroughly interesting and for the first 
time hope of solutions of many problems 
dawned on our weary spirits. 

We returned home to report and got author- 
ity to act. I will explain the Communal 
Kitchen to you, though it is incredible to imag- 
ine your great, rich and inexhaustible country 
ever coming even within long-distance range 
of such a contingency. 

The Communal or Central Kitchen is estab- 
lished and run by experts for the cooking of a 
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large number of meals at the lowest possible 
cost. A first-class plant is necessary, the most 
up-to-date ovens, steamers, utensils of every 
kind. The cook must not only be an expert, 
but an artist, as she has to disguise many in- 
ferior ingredients and make them appetising 
for her consumers. Stores are purchased, 
wherever possible, in large quantities, special 
permits, of course, being afforded by the vig- 
ilant Food Administrators. Thus consider- 
able saving is effected. 

The cook and her immediate assistant or as- 
sistants are highly paid workers, but those 
who apportion and handle the food, over the 
counters, are volunteers, giving about four 
hours' service every day. 

No food is consumed on the premises. The 
customers bring their own utensils in which 
they carry their portions away. There is a 
very complete and clever system of tickets is- 
sued at a little box office near the door, so that 
no money is tendered at the counter. 

The menu cards are hung in the windows so 
that customers may make their choice before 
they come inside. 

We went early, watched the cooking in 
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AN ENGLISH WOMAN'S HOME 

i 

process, got stuffed up with unheard-of knowl- 
edge of every kind, and then waited for the 
customers. 

They interested me beyond everything; al- 
though it is a very poor neighbourhood, it was 
not the very poor who came. Some quite well 
dressed people, with baskets nicely covered and 
lined, appeared and were more than satisfied. 
One bank clerk's wife assured me that it was 
the gi^eatest Godsend to her, because she was 
working, too, and they were both now assured 
of one good warm, substantial meal every day, 
and nothing else mattered. 

A mother of seven, "steps and stairs," cling- 
ing to her skirts had tears in her eyes as she 
spoke of the salvation the Kitchen had brought 
to her family. 

When I saw the quarts of soup disappear- 
ing in jugs and pails through the swing doors, 
I took fresh heart and decided to make an- 
other onslaught on the Amazonian mother 
who would let her offspring "go without" in- 
stead of "demeaning 'erself " to any truck with 
bones. 

Have you ever noticed how a little thing can 
change the whole outlook; how you can be 
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I 

transported by a lift of the brows, the glimpse 
of some unexpected object, miles from your 
base? 

As I sat there behind the counter of the 
Communal Kitchen in the Westminster 
Bridge Road, I was suddenly transported to 
South Germany, to that little Bavarian uni- 
versity town we both know so well. What do 
you think transported me? Why, the sight of 
a student-like person, German, surely, carry- 
ing the little arrangement of dishes in a stand 
(IVe forgotten its German name and glory in 
the lapse) , which used to bring my greasy din- 
ner from the hotel Drei Mohren. 

Did these days really exist? Do you re- 
member my landlady with the sweet, depre- 
cating smile, her painful humility, her awe and 
worship of the temporal powers that ruled lier 
destiny? How we distrusted it all, sure that 
it was a false foundation for life, and that free- 
dom is the heritage of the human soul! 

Even then, we were both conscious of hid- 
den fires — of smouldering hates. They wxre 
deferential to us; yet inwardly loathing, per- 
haps fearing us. They have not changed at 
all, Cornelia, the little river which watered 
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German sentiment in that horrid mediseval 
placCy has only broadened and widened into a 
vast and overwhelming sea. They were get- 
ting ready even then. I could see it in the 
jealous eyes of the women, their veiled and 
laboured politeness at the coffee parties had 
nothing convincing about it. It did not 
warmly enfold you like the gracious hospital- 
ity of kindred peoples. They were bidden to 
hate, and they knew how to do it, and could veil 
their fine accomplishment in the art. 

Oh, Cornelia, where am I now? 

The Food Expert has got out of bounds. 
Call her back, discipline her; make her toe 
the line. 

The outcome of that interesting morning is 
that we have a Communal Kitchen and it is 
going to be a tremendous success. 

Some doubts had to be dispelled. People 
have to be convinced that it is not a charity, 
bearing the brand of the soup kitchen, or the 
Penny Dinner scheme. We have tried to ex- 
plain that it is merely co-ordinating the forces ; 
co-operation on a large scale. 

We have gotten the cook, the machineryj, the 
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volunteers, and I think we are going to sleep 
more soundly "o' nights" because of it. 

At least the children will be better fed. 
Some of them are getting to look so peaky, 
for milk has been very scarce all winter, and 
butter a thing of the past. 

We just simply daren't sit down to think of 
the children. It must seem so strange and 
cruel to them. What have they to do with the 
quarrels of Emperors and Kings and Diplo- 
matists? They are heirs of all the ages and 
have the right to live in peace and comfort, 
none daring to make them afraid. Sometimes 
I have a nightmare of the first indictment this 
young generation will bring up at the Day of 
Judgment — the children who have known 
naught but terror — the sons who have had to 
die before they lived — the widowed girls and 
the girls who never will taste the joy of wife- 
hood or motherhood, but must go unmated to 
their graves. 

Almost it makes me long to be there lying 
sweetly and unconsciously beside the quiet 
dead. 

I have no letters from Himself. Where he 
is — whether alive or dead — how oan I tell? I 
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— 1 

haven't even the poor consolation of writing 
to him — because I have no address. 

There is no glory in war for women's hearts, 
Cornelia. To-day I am neither proud nor 
glad, but only sorry to be a soldier's wife. 



[158] 



XV 

I HAVE been reading over your last letter 
and find that my impassioned tirade about 
Food left many of your questions unanswered. 

What you tell me about the present state 
of your war activities takes me back about 
three years to the time when we were at the 
same stage. Have you noticed that one wom- 
an's matrimonial experience is not of the slight- 
est use to another? It doesn't even help her 
to avoid quite obvious pitfalls. War seems to 
me to be a little like that. Every country has 
to "dree her own weird" in it — grope for her 
soul in her own particular way. 

One of Lloyd George's speeches put the 
matter in a nut shell: "To peace-loving peo- 
ples war is a trackless waste — an undiscovered 
country through which a pathway has to be 
made." 

That being so, there must of necessity be 
side tracking. I see your George stamping 
about in righteous indignation because things 
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i J 

are not being "put over" with the rapidity and 
despatch which seem to him essential. Tell 
him he'll just have to possess his soul in pa- 
tience, and don't let him do anything foolish. 
He'll only hinder thereby. 

I do hope and pray most fervently, however, 
that you are exaggerating the state of affairs. 
I wonder why it is that the war machine has 
such a tendency to become unwieldy. It needs 
not any vivid imagination, nor a particularly 
brilliant intelligence to grasp the magnitude 
of your war task. 

You have almost everything the old world 
now lacks, your trouble is to co-ordinate your 
forces from sea to sea, and get them into line. 
Colossus can't move with the agility of his 
lesser brethren, we must comfort ourselves 
and stay our impatience with that reflection. 
I am sure you will hate leaving your lovely 
home, but Washington will have compensa- 
tions. I could not, somehow, imagine or con- 
template existence for myself very far from 
London, in wartime, at least for any length of 
time. 

I don't agree with all you say about the 
mobilisation of your women for war. 
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There is no other way of doing it; and the 
things you tell me are only the excrescences of 
a great forward movement, the shock of which 
will soon make itself felt throughout the en- 
tire country. 

We, too, had the kind of women you criti- 
cise so severely. I knew one whose first act of 
war service for her country was the purchase 
of a red cross of rubies to wear with her uni- 
form. She went to France with it, but aban- 
doned it before very long. The real cross, 
when she came up with it, red with the blood 
of brave men, put her to shame. She has won 
the saint's crown out there, and her name has 
been on a hundred dying lips. 

So don't worry about these little things, 
Cornelia, they will pass as a tale that is told. 
The best will remain — the things that cannot 
be shaken, and which are the same in all coun- 
tries, and of all peoples. 

God, how I cling to that text. I have to say 
it over and over a hundred times a day. We 
are getting so badly shaken here that some- 
times we feel as if we had no foundation what- 
soever. 

I don't know whether I have made you 
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understand that a big section of England now 
is as truly the war zone as that across the 
Channel. 

The air raids are increasing in number and 
intensity; this week we had four nights in the 
cellar. 

There are not so many oddities about the 
proceedings now we have settled in to the game 
in dead earnest. When we get the warning 
we act with as little delay as possible, seek 
one nearest available shelter, where we sit 
down to endure the strain as best we can. 

There is precious little badinage now about 
the Zeppelin parties ; we all feel that they have 
long passed the amusing stage. 

Can you read between the lines? I wonder 
have you grasped the fact that the strain is 
becoming almost more than we can bear? I 
have the dreadful feeling that perhaps I my- 
self will not be able to hold out. 

You know I never could do without sleep; 
my too active brain has always demanded its 
full measure, and rebelled when cheated of it. 

A Zeppelin night means anything from 
seven or eight o'clock at night till four in the 
morning — the strain of tension and fear never 
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relaxed for a moment. Always you are listen- 
ing, listening — and the gunfire never ceases. 
It is punctuated by the noise of the explosions 
following the bomb dropping, which means, 
though it may be a good many miles from you, 
that somebody is being punished. 

We still speak about the Zeppelins, though 
they don't come any more. Their successors, 
the Gothas, are not less terrible; in fact they 
seem to be more daring, more destructive, 
faster and less vulnerable. 

Also they are equipped with all kinds of new 
and terrible death-dealing weapons. 

A very strange one descended on our little 
town night before last. We heard a noise like 
a rushing mighty wind or an express train, 
going at lightning speed through the air. It 
was not the usual steady whir of the Gotha's 
engine. The thing fell in a garden at the top 
of Queen's Hill and then exploded, doing much 
damage to houses, though mercifully no one 
was killed. They say it was an aerial torpedo 
which travels through the air by its own mo- 
mentum. If this is true, imagine what magni- 
tude this form of attack might achieve and 
how much we may yet have to suffer! 
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How often one is appalled by this dedica- 
tion of human will and mind power to the dev- 
il's service. Is there to be no limit set to it? 
Is it the beginning of the terrors which will 
make men call on the rocks to cover them? 
You have no idea, Cornelia, what a weak help- 
less thing humanity is until it is subjected to 
this sort of thing. It isn't clean fighting; it 
makes brave men desperate. 

I think on the whole the women bear it bet- 
ter. They are more used to suffering and 
never forget to be protective. All sorts of 
moving things happen about the children. One 
poor woman stretched herself over her two 
children on the floor as the torpedo was com- 
ing, hoping to receive the brunt herself. None 
of them were hurt. 

But these things are getting home, Cornelia, 
they are telling on us all. Little portents show 
the weakening of the fibre here and there. I 
am feeling it myself, while all the time fight- 
ing against it. 

Of course the chief object of these diabolical 

visitations is just that, so to weaken the moral 

stamina that we people will cry for peace at 

any price. That cry will never be heard in 

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this country, Cornelia, not if he sends his aerial 
torpedoes hurtling through the sky, world 
without end. 

There is no grumbling, surprisingly little 
protest anywhere. Our people accept these 
things as part of the horrible business in which 
we are presently engaged. They don't even 
know how to hate properly. We have a Ger- 
man prison camp nearby, the men being em- 
ployed in the woods, cutting and preparing the 
timber of which so many of our finest proper- 
ties are now being denuded. These men are 
scared to death in the raids, but though you 
may hear an occasional hope expressed that a 
bomb might fall on the prison camp, I ques- 
tion whether, if you drove it home, you would 
find they really desired such a thing to hap- 
pen. We are not successful haters; we are 
only clean fighters, and desperate lovers of 
peace. 

Can you accept that paradoxical present- 
ment which is an actual description of our 
mental attitude? 

The children in the war zone here are be- 
ginning to exercise us ; some of them are really 
subnormal now, like their poor little brothers 
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and sisters in the other countries. Those who 
can, remove them to safer places, sending them 
often to relations in remote parts of the coun- 
try. Children quickly droop when their sleep- 
ing hours are shortened or much disturbed. 

The school teachers find them either restless 
or extremely languid after an air raid; and 
cannot urge them to concentrate on their les- 
sons. One wee chap in our cellar, in his pa- 
jamas the other night, said pathetically to his 
mother, with eyes heavy with sleep : "Mummy, 
you won't get me up next night, will vou, till 
they are really here?" 

No, I am not hearing regularly from Him- 
self. There has been no letter for weeks and 
weeks. Whether they are being torpedoed 
when written, or not written at all, I don't 
know. There is only the blank wall of silence. 
How much can the human heart stand, I won- 
der? We are amazing creatures, bound by 
"cords which come from out eternity." 



[166] 



XVI 

Yes, I have read Sir Oliver Lodge's book 
and had some correspondence with him about 
it. Somehow he got it into his head that I 
had written a rather brutal, unsigned article 
on it in the Daily Mail, Writing to refute 
this, I set forth my views on spiritualism and 
the intervention of mediums between us and 
those who have passed on. We say *'gone 
away" in Scotland, and I think I like it better. 
He sent me a long letter in reply. I will en- 
close you a copy. 

I don't think there is any road that way. 
The only key to the grave was left on the stone 
of the sepulchre on the Resurrection morn- 
ing. 

Do you remember the Leightons — Robert 
and Marie ? They lost their beautiful son, not 
the only, but the favourite one, in France, and 
she has written a beautiful book about him, 
called "Boy of My Heart." It is the best thing 
by far she has ever written, and immensely 
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worth reading. She is now side-tracking with 
the rest along these doubtful and bewildering 
paths. Oh, I wish people wouldn't. To me 
it seems a kind of desecration. 

If I can have any communication with my 
son, I don't want to have it through some 
strange, odd freak of a person, who has to go 
into a trance for the purpose. If God means 
me to hear from the other side. He will send 
the Boy to me direct. That I most firmly 
believe, and am content to wait that day. If 
it never comes, why then I can go on waiting 
for the day which can't be so very far distant, 
when I shall cross the narrow sea between that 
happy land and ours. I wrote as strongly and 
convincingly as I could to Mrs. Leighton, but 
I don't think it availed much. There is a little 
group of the intellectuals just now all heading 
in the same direction, names familiar all the 
world over. 

To me it is all intensely pathetic. It is the 
cry of lost youth, the admission that they have 
no real city or abiding place, and no sort of 
surety about what is going to come. 

I remember Himself coming in one day and 
sending me out to a dying woman with the 
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words: "I'm through with my job. It's yours 
now." When I got to her she looked at me 
so wistfully, saying: "Doctor says you are so 
sure." 

You have no idea how these words thrilled 
me. Thank God I am sure. We are all sure, 
who know in Whom we have believed. 

Since I wrote to you last I have had dis- 
quieting news about Effie. She was knocked 
down, while standing beside her car, by a big 
French military motor. The officers riding in 
it did not even stop to pick her up. Possibly 
they were not even aware that anything had 
happened. One must be charitable enough to 
suppose so. Some one came along and took 
her to a hospital, from which she is now able to 
send a few pencilled lines. She escaped with a 
few good bruises and it was quite a few days 
before I could discover whether there was any 
facial injury. Nobody seemed to reflect that I 
might be worrying about that. I applied for 
permission to go over to see her, but was re- 
fused. Nobodj^ is permitted to cross the Chan- 
nel to visit wounded or sick relatives unless the 
case is hopeless. 

Her temperature kept up obstinately for 
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longer than they hked, but I am thankful to 
say she is now convalescent. 

I have had shoals of letters from all kinds 
of people over there, from the Brigadier to the 
orderty, expatiating on her absolute indis- 
pensability at the Base. They seem terrified 
in case we order her to come home. 

It is very sweet to hear that she is so greatly 
beloved, and doing efficiently and cheerfully 
so much useful service. What experience she 
must have locked in her too uncommunicative 
bosom ! She has had three years of it now, and 
has really told us very little. If she never tries 
to express it in writing, well, it surely will 
inform and colour all her after life. I should 
not dare to bid her home on my own responsi- 
bility, though there are days when I not only 
want, but need her desperately. 

Talking of the modernity of these inaccessi- 
ble, mysterious young creatures, I don't think 
I told you of a friend of mine, mother of four, 
who soon after the outbreak of war, received 
from her family a letter signed by each mem- 
ber, thanldng her for permitting them to be 
born at the psychological moment of history. 

Another friend of mine who had the misf or- 
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AN ENGLISH WOMAN'S HOME 

tune to marry a full-blooded and very German 
German, who, however, conveniently departed 
this life the year before the war, told me her 
sons passionately reproached her for giving 
them a German father. 

One gets bewildered in this strange hurly- 
burly where every mask seems to be torn off 
and the decencies of life hardly respected any 
more. 

I am so glad you are easier in your mind 
about Anne. Effie was tremendously inter- 
ested. All she said was ''Anne will never 
marry that one ; he's only experimental." Per- 
haps that may comfort you a little. Presum- 
ably, these birds of a feather understand one 
another ! 

Sometimes I have the awful feeling that 
Effie has passed out of the region of my love 
and care. Yet how dare I intrude these little 
personal fears upon a world's sorrow? 

Every day I am writing letters to fathers 
and mothers whose darlings have gone forever 
"where, beyond these voices, there is peace." 

One grows heart weary of the task, and 
even the balm of Gilead seems to have lost 
its power to soothe or heal. 

[m] 



AN ENGLISH WOMAN'S HOME 

Yet often and often I am thrilled by the 
courage and calmness and faith of those who 
have given the most. They are upheld and 
illumined by some white and lovely flame which 
surely emanates from the secret place of the 
Most High. 

Never has there been such glory of sacri- 
fice ennobled by that passion for the right 
which lifts those whom it inspires very high, 
above ignoble things. 

My country was never greater than now, 
Cornelia. Shorn and blood-stained, she is 
worthy to be numbered with those who are 
arrayed in white robes and have come out of 
great tribulation. 

A wonderful, wonderful thing has just hap- 
pened. I don't know quite how to tell you. 

I have been asked by our Foreign Office to 
go to America and tell part of the story of 
what we have done in the war and what the 
war has done for us. 

Do you understand, Cornelia, I am com- 
ing to you, right now, by the very earliest 
boat? 

God has undoubtedly opened this door. I 



AN ENGLISH WOMAN'S HO]ME 

shall be so glad to leave the tired Old World 
for a spell, and drink at the Fount of your 
glorious youth. 

Even the submarines can't scare me away 
from this great Adventure. 

At this moment America means only you 
and George and dear little Anne, and the 
heavenly rest under your roof tree. 

Perhaps it may prove to be something very 
different, but that is how I am feeling at the 
moment. 

God will surely forgive me for this mo- 
mentary slackening. 

I am so tired, Cornelia. 

Only God knows how tired I am! 



THE END 



[173] 



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